


Cacophony

by Duck_Life



Category: Lab Rats (TV 2012)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Forgiveness, Gen, Season/Series 03, Triton App
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2018-10-31 03:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10890306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: When Krane shows up in the lab, he vanishes with Bree under his control. The boys get her back-- along with the whole bionic army-- but getting her life back to normal is easier said than done.





	1. Playing Catch-Up

“Bree?”

That’s the first sound she hears, and it’s from a distance, and she’s looking up at a dark sky with maybe four visible stars and she’s pretty sure she’s lying down.

“ _Bree?_ ” Louder, more insistent. It’s Adam. She doesn’t know where she is or what’s going on, but she knows her brother’s voice.

“Bree?”

She blinks, rolls up onto her knees, straightens up into a defensive stance all in a microsecond, her vision blurring as her body does. She’s confused, she’s exhausted, and she’s got a pounding headache pulsing through her ears and down her neck.

“Bree?”

“I’m here,” she calls out, looking around wildly for Adam. “Also, _why_ am I here?” She looks, looks, but she can’t see him. “And _where is_ here?”

“Bree!” Adam finally shows up over the crest of a hill and comes running for her, scoops her up in a giant bear hug and starts patting her down like he’s checking for broken bones. “Bree, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I think,” she says, her scrambled brain trying to work through the muck to figure out if she’s injured anywhere. The headache and the disorientation might go together, but she’s got no idea what the connection is. “Adam, what the heck happened?”

But as soon as he’s done making sure she’s okay, his expression shifts a little. Suddenly guarded, suddenly on edge. Is she imagining it, or does he look a little bit hostile? “I need to know you’re you,” he says, suspicious. “What number am I thinking of?”

Bree rolls her eyes but takes a swing. “420?”

Adam grins. “You know me so well,” he says, hugging her again with no lingering apprehension. Bree’s nervous, though, because if he was reluctant to trust her… there has to be a reason. Something happened here. Something Adam’s not telling her.

_Worried about what might happen to Leo and Tasha, they get thrown off guard when Krane shows up in the lab. With the DavenWall down, Bree and her brothers made themselves vulnerable and it’s coming back to bite them._

_Bree uses the home front advantage and drops him below the lab with the flick of a switch, Adam following to take him down for good, but Krane just geoleaps back up and uses his molecular kinesis to suspend them in midair before sending them crashing to the floor._

_They’re goners, but then Douglas shows up with a cocky attitude and a big gun. And yeah, he might be their Evil Uncle Father, but he came through in the clutch._

_They have to give him that, at least._

_Douglas buys them a few seconds, but then Krane’s back up on his feet and he slams Douglas down, leaving him curled up around his injured side._

_And then suddenly, Krane’s bionics aren’t the threat anymore. The kids’ are. One app specifically._

_Krane pulls out a terrifyingly familiar remote and hits a button, and Chase’s eyes flash green._

_“Oh no you don’t,” Douglas mutters, going for his gun from his spot on the floor. Before he can fire though, Krane activates Bree’s Triton App._

“Hey,” Bree says, and for once she’s actually struggling to keep up with her brother as he crosses the field toward a big satellite dish on the far side. “Hey!” She speeds up to him and skids to a stop beside him. “You still haven’t told me where we are.”

“Uh,” Adam says. “We are in a field.”

“Wow,” she says sarcastically. “Great. Helpful. _Where’s the field_?”

He pauses and then says, “All around us, Bree.” She whacks him lightly on the arm. “We’re by an abandoned junkyard near Pike’s Crest.”

“Oh,” she says, and then waits for an explanation. He gives none. “Um, _why_?”

He fidgets, looking uncomfortable, and keeps walking. “To stop Krane.” And then he turns around and gives her a big goofy puppy-dog grin that doesn’t reach all the way up to his eyes. “And we did! We won! Go us!”

It finally occurs to Bree that whatever she’s not remembering, it was _intense_. And Adam either doesn’t want to tell her or doesn’t realize what she doesn’t remember. “Look, I don’t know if I banged my head or somethin’, but I’m _really_ confused, Adam. I don’t even know how we got here or how I ended up on the ground. Last thing I remember, we were in the lab and Krane had just gotten in.”

“Uh-huh,” Adam says, focusing on his feet like he’s trying not to trip over a rock. “And then Douglas showed up and saved us.”

_Douglas fires at Krane and downs him again before he can use the Triton App on Adam, but Chase and Bree are already under his control. “I’ve got Krane and Bree,” Douglas calls out to his oldest son. “See if you can talk Chase down! Leo said he did that before.”_

_Douglas squares up and aims the gun at Krane again while Adam pivots to his brother. “Chasey,” he says, firm but quiet, and suddenly he’s out of battle-mode and into big-brother mode. It’s that same no-thinking no-fear focus he felt the time Chase got trapped inside his own capsule, but it’s different. Chase is trapped inside himself. “Hey, I’m right here. You can come outta this.”_

_Chase just looks at him blankly with those creepy green eyes. Krane’s focused on controlling Bree at the moment, so Chase is just standing there._

_“You can—” But Krane notices what Adam’s trying to do and sends Chase a command. Controlled by Krane, Chase jumps into action, launching Adam across the room with his molecular kinesis and then advancing on him._

_“Keep talking to him,” Douglas calls out as he fires at Krane and misses. Adam wants to, but Chase whips a stool in front of him and forces it upward to Adam’s chin, right up against his windpipe._

_Adam uses all his strength to shove the stool away from himself. “You’re stronger than him,” he says, and manages to throw the stool off to the left. “You’re stronger than Krane.” Adam jumps to his feet. Chase’s eyes are still glowing eerily green but he’s frozen for the moment, jaw clenched. He looks like he’s listening. Across the room, Bree super speeds at Douglas and knocks him down, but Adam’s focused on his brother. “You’re stronger than Krane and you’re stronger than the Triton App,” Adam promises, open palms facing Chase. “And… and I’m sorry if I ever made you think anything else.”_

_He waits for a moment that feels like it goes on forever, and then Chase seizes up and screws his eyes shut. When he opens them, they look normal again, and Adam heaves a sigh of relief._

_Chase’s gaze fixes on something over Adam’s shoulder. “Bree,” he calls out in a panic before the exertion of the Triton App overwhelms him and he crumples to the floor. Adam whirls around just in time to see Krane grab his sister and geoleap away._

“It was the Triton App,” Bree says, and the way Adam stiffens up confirms it. “Krane used the Triton App on me, didn’t he?”

Adam keeps walking toward the big satellite dish. “How did you know?”

She rubs her temple. “I recognize the headache.” They’re nearing the border of the junkyard. “I can’t remember any of it. How long was I out?” He doesn’t say anything. Even in the dim light, even from behind, Bree can see the way the set of his shoulders betray his uneasiness. “Adam, how long was I out?” Nothing. “A day?” He stops walking but he doesn’t say anything. “Two days?”

Quietly, quietly, still not looking at her, Adam says, “Nine months.”

All the air whooshes out of her. Meekly, she croaks out, “Th… three days?”

Adam turns around to look at her, his eyebrows knitted together with concern. “Come on,” he says. “We have to keep going.”

But Bree can’t walk anymore; she sinks to her knees, desperate fingers clutching at the scraggly grass beneath her. “What…” she gasps out, feeling like there’s something wrapped around her heart and squeezing. “Did I do… did I _hurt_ …?”

“Don’t think about it,” he says, crouching down beside her and tugging her toward him, sounding almost as distressed as she does. “Don’t think about it. Just come on. Just don’t think about it.”

She used to say the same to him when they were kids, and Adam would wake up her and Chase with his nightmares. And they’d all pile into one capsule and tell him it wasn’t real, just don’t think about it, just don’t think about, it wasn’t real. (Of course, given what they know now about their Uncle-Father Douglas, his night terrors were probably all based in reality.)

“I’m sorry,” she says, teeth chattering in shock despite the relatively warm night. “I’m s-sorry, Adam… I’m sorry…”

“You got nothin’ to apologize for,” he swears, rubbing his hands up and down her arms and back. “But we gotta go, Bree. We gotta go. Mr. Davenport’s in the hospital.” She looks up at him for an explanation, and Adam replies with an uncomfortable sigh before launching into his explanation. “Krane had a whole bionic army,” he says. “They were going to use that dish to use the Triton App to take over the whole world. We took them down. But Davenport got hurt.”

It’s all swirling together in her head, Krane and her father and her brother. The Triton App. The big satellite dish just behind them. “You and Chase took them down,” she says, trying to piece everything together through the fog in her brain. “I was… I was working with Krane.”

“He was controlling you,” Adam says. “The whole army. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have been helping you and Chase,” she mumbles. “I should’ve…”

“We had help,” he says lightly. “We had Leo.” She shoots him a skeptical look. “Oh! Right, he’s got a bionic arm now. Oh, and the whole world knows we’re bionic but it’s fine. Oh, and I got a C+ in Algebra.”

“Congratulations,” she says, trying to process everything. “Wait, his arm is _bionic_?”

“We need to go to the hospital,” he says. “I’ll tell you more later. Are you up for super speeding?” She has to think about it, but she nods. Gripping her big brother tightly, Bree zooms back toward Mission Creek.

_Mr. Davenport storms into the lab, Leo and Tasha trying to keep up behind him. “What happened?” he demands, looking accusatorily at his brother. “Where’s Bree?”_

_Chase rubs the back of his neck; he_ aches _from the exertion the Triton App put on his bionics_. _“Krane took her,” he tells Davenport, dejected. “And he’s controlling her with the Triton App.”_

 _Donald whirls on Douglas. “You did this,” he says, and Douglas doesn’t actually look inclined to disagree. “You created the threat and now my_ daughter _is in trouble—” Evidently, he’s too angry for words so he shoves at Douglas, gets up in his face._

_Adam and Leo look frozen. Chase throws a force field between his father and his uncle and forces the two of them apart. “Stop it,” he demands, yelling even though it hurts and his ears are ringing. “If Douglas weren’t here, Krane would have me and Adam, too. He protected us.”_

_“If it weren’t for him,” Donald shouts, “you three wouldn’t need to be protected!”_

_Chase puts himself between Donald and Douglas in an attempt to stop the fighting. His head hurts. His neck hurts. There’s a gnawing pit in his stomach that gets worse every second he doesn’t know where his sister is._

Chase can hear everything— Tasha’s shoe tapping on the linoleum, the nurses chatting down the hall, the steady blips on the monitor of Mr. Davenport’s heartbeat.

He can hear the long spaces between those blips.

And he can hear when Adam finally gets back, the familiar heavy thud of his sneakers a floor below. Chase mumbles something to Tasha, Douglas and Leo and then races downstairs. There’s Adam. And beside him, someone Chase wasn’t sure he’d ever see again.

“Is she…?” he trails off, looking at Adam, who gives him a nod. That’s all Chase needs— he launches himself at Bree and pulls her into a tight hug. Her hair’s in his face and she smells overwhelmingly like wet leaves but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. That’s Bree. That’s his sister. “Are you okay?” he asks, pulling away a little to get a look at her.

“Mmhmm,” she says, nodding rapidly as tears build up in her eyes. He can tell that she noticed how he checked with Adam before checking with her. He can tell that she knows what happened, at least the gist. “Chase, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, hugging her again. With one hand, he reaches out and takes Adam’s hand, tethering the three of them together.

Upstairs, Chase and Adam stand on either side of Bree when she walks into Mr. Davenport’s hospital room, wide eyes taking in the whole scene.

“Bree!” Leo immediately hops up from his seat and gives her a hug. He’s taller; she has to look up to meet his eyes now.

“It’s so good to see you, honey,” Tasha says, hugging Bree when Leo lets her go. “How do you feel?”

Chase can’t read minds, but he knows his sister. He can tell what she’s thinking. How does she feel? Powerless. Used. Frustrated. Betrayed. “Tired,” she tells Tasha. “I just feel… tired.” Her eyes pivot to Douglas, who’s also holding his arms out for a hug. He doesn’t get one. “What is _he_ doing here?”

“Hey, I’m one of the good guys now,” Douglas swears. “Are _you_?” Chase shoots him an angry look and he shuts up.

“How is he?” Bree asks, looking down at Mr. Davenport. No one says anything. “What happened to him?”

Chase glances at Douglas. “One of Krane’s bionic soldiers tried to take him out,” Douglas explains. “But he’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

That’s not true. They all know it. They all choose to believe it anyway.

_“So there is a girl?” Leo says, staring at S-1 as she sidles up to Krane. Beside him, Perry and Douglas both look equally flabbergasted._

_S-1 smirks at him. “Two girls, actually,” she corrects, and watches over her shoulder as another, all-too-familiar bionic teen stalks in. Leo feels like he’s been expecting this, but it doesn’t stop his heart from hammering away in his rib cage._

_“Hey,” Perry says, the only one not startled to silence. “It’s the little robot girl, uh… Bridget?”_

_“It’s Bree,” Krane says, staring down at Douglas with haughty superiority. “Or rather, S-B. And she works for me now.”_

_“We’ll see about that,” Leo says, and like a mouse rearing up at a lion he throws himself at his sister, jumping up and fastening his arms around her shoulders. “Come on, snap out of it, Bree,” he screeches, but it’s not likely to work. For one thing, it’s been about a month since Krane took her. If she hasn’t magically “snapped out of it” by now, it’s gonna take more than that. For another thing, she’s already peeling him off and tossing him across the room like a limp banana peel._

_Bree, S-1 and Krane are too powerful for them, even if Perry were actually helping instead of cowering behind a trashcan. Douglas dodges hits from Krane and S-1 while Leo struggles against Bree, who’s got him pinned by the stairs._

_“Bree,” Leo tries again, staring into her blank face. “It’s me, it’s Leo, remember? You’re my sister. You’re my beautiful bionic bestie. Remember when you and I ran the school together for a day? Remember when I helped you figure out how to use your vocal manipulation?”_

_For a second, just one second, it looks like she falters. He’s pretty sure she does. But Krane notices, glances over and amplifies the Triton App just by thinking it. And Bree’s eyes glow even greener than before._

Tasha’s staying at the hospital overnight, so Douglas drives the rest of them home to get some sleep. Bree turned down the ride and ran home, so she’s waiting on the bench outside when Leo trudges up the driveway.

“Hey,” he says to Bree, waving to Chase, Adam and Douglas as they disappear inside the house. He takes a seat beside his sister. “How was the fresh air?”

“Cold.” She’s sitting with her hands wrapped around her elbows, sleeves pulled up over her thumbs. The shirt’s black, like the pants. Like how all of Krane’s soldiers dressed. Leo wants her back in her regular clothes, pastel stripes and jeans and brightly colored boots. Leo wants everything to just go back to the way it was. “But I was goin’ like 500 miles per hour so that makes sense.” She turns and looks at Leo. “Adam said you’re bionic now.”

“Just the arm,” he says, showing it off proudly. “I can throw laser spheres. And I have energy transference! Which I’ve mostly been using to charge my phone.”

Bree laughs and it sounds awkward coming out. Like she forgot how. “Can I see how the laser spheres work?”

Leo glances over at the front door, knowing Douglas’ll freak out if he catches him. “Okay,” he says to Bree in a conspiratorial whisper. And he reels back and lets a sphere fly.

“Wow,” she says, impressed. “You cleared the Rosenblatt’s driveway.”

“Adam’s been teaching me to throw,” he says.

“That sounds like a lost cause,” Bree laughs, sounding for the first time like herself. “Why just the arm? Why didn’t Uncle Dougie make you completely bionic?”

Leo fidgets on the bench. “Well, I, uh, I only _needed_ a bionic arm.”

“Why?” Bree says, gesturing to him. “The rest of you is scrawny too.”

“Yeah, but, um,” he says, looking more and more uncomfortable, “the rest of me didn’t get crushed under a 450-pound ceiling beam by one of Krane’s soldiers.”

Bree gapes. “Was it… Leo, did _I_ …?”

“No no no,” he assures her quickly. “It was someone else. One of the other soldiers.” To show he’s fine, he loops his bionic arm around her and pats her twice on the shoulder. “You didn’t hurt anyone, Bree,” he tells her, but there’s an edge to his voice.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m better than okay!” he grins. “Did you see that fireball I shot out of my fingers? I’m _awesome_.” She doesn’t look convinced. “And I’m even better now that you’re back,” he says, growing serious. “We all are.”

They sit there in mutual silence for a moment, soaking up the stars and the night and the feeling of being home again. It’s been too quiet here with her gone. Even at school, the boys sat silently at lunch, trying to ignore the empty seat at their table.

Just as Leo’s about to point out that he’s a little chilly, too, they hear the bushes nearby rustling. Instinctively, Leo and Bree hop up and into defensive stances. “Who’s there?” Bree demands.

Tense silence, and then a girl in a leather jacket about their age steps out with her hands up. Immediately, Leo primes a laser sphere in his right hand.

“What?” Bree squawks. “Who is that?”

“That’s S-1,” Leo says. “ _She’s_ the one who crushed my arm.”

_S-1 goes to kick her ankles out from under her but S-B’s too fast, slides away and decks S-1, who counters swiftly with a hit to her shoulder. S-B squares up, studies her opponent, and then launches a series of punches that all hit home. When she’s done, S-1 lies on the thin mat panting._

_“You’re all speed,” she says harshly, looking up from the floor. “No style. No strategy.” S-B just shrugs and turns around, making no attempt to help her comrade back up. “Not much of a talker, are you?” S-1 points out, grunting as she pushes herself into a standing position._

_“Unlike you, I do all my running with my feet,” S-B replies. “Not with my mouth.”_

_“Whatever,” S-1 says, heading for the showers. “I think you’re just afraid that what everyone’s thinking is true. That all that time you spent living in a cozy little house pretending to be a normal human made you soft.”_

_S-B blinks, startled into confusion. It’s like there’s a disconnect for a moment in her brain. Because S-1 is right, she did spend a long time living in a house, living differently than she does now._

_It’s a paradox, because her life as it is is all she knows. But she also knows there was something before_ this. _Something else._

_“Go wash off your defeat,” she snarls at S-1. “I’m gonna hit the treadmill.”_

“Don’t,” S-1 cries out, sounding small and scared and nothing like the ferocious soldier Leo fought against. “Please, please don’t hurt me, I’m just confused,” she insists, hands up in surrender. “I don’t remember who I am or what the heck is going on. I just… I just woke up in a junkyard and my head hurts and I don’t even know where I came from.”

“This should jog your memory,” Leo says, rearing back his bionic arm.

Bree stops him, holding out an arm in front of him. “Leo, don’t,” she says, looking back and forth from Leo to S-1. “I know you,” she says to the girl. “Why do I know you?”

S-1 stares at her. “Same,” she acknowledges, looking confused. “You’re S-B. Whatever was going on before this, you were a part of it. I remember that.”

“Bree, don’t listen to her,” Leo says, trying to edge his sister out of the way. “She’s one of Krane’s bionic soldiers.”

“Yeah, well, so was I,” Bree says. “All of us were under the Triton App, right? So why not give her the same benefit of the doubt you gave me?”

“Because you’re my sister and I have to,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Look, there’s only two people who can put the smackdown on me and get away with it, and that’s you and Adam. Technically Chase would be on there too, but let’s be real. This creepy evil cyborg girl? Not on the list!”

S-1 doesn’t look surprised. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness or anything,” she swears. “Just a little help clearing things up, ’cause right now all I’ve got to go off of is a pounding headache and some very fuzzy flashbacks. After I woke up, we followed S-B back here.”

Bree raises her eyebrows. “We?”

“Oh, yeah,” S-1 says, looking over her shoulder. “Come on out, guys.”

Forty bionic soldiers emerge from the greenery.

“Okay, Big D needs a new landscaper,” Leo says.

Chase must’ve heard the unrest outside because he barrels out of the front door, eyes swiveling from Leo to Bree. “What happened? What’s going on?” Trying to be discreet, Leo tilts his head toward the bionic soldiers and Chase looks over at them— and shrieks. “What are they doing here?”

“We followed her,” another solider says, stepping forward and pointing to Bree. “None of us remember anything except our names. I’m S-4.”

Chase’s nostrils flare. “Great! I’ll catch you up! You’re all terrible people and you are _leaving_.”

“Chase,” Bree says, grabbing his elbow. “We should help them.”

He looks at her, incredulous. “Are you crazy?” he whispers. “One of them tried to kill me with an electrified fork thingy. That girl crushed Leo under a ceiling beam. They’re _evil_.”

“So was I,” she says, hands on her hips. “Look, Chase, my head’s still really messed up and I don’t know what’s goin’ on. But I know that I was under the Triton App, and I know Krane made me do things. Things you don’t want to tell me about. These kids are just like me.” She swallows, trying not to tear up, because she’s trying to make a point and appear in control. “So, guys, if they’re evil, and they’re also just like me, then you’re saying that I’m evil.”

Leo and Chase freeze. For a second, it’s like the forty-odd bionic super soldiers in the front yard don’t even exist, and it’s just Bree and her brothers.

“Come here,” Chase mumbles, wrapping her into a hug. Leo wedges in between them and hugs Bree, too. “You had to go and use logic against me.” He sighs. “Of course we’ll help them.” Chase looks up at the worried faces of the soldiers, his chin just barely clearing the top of his sister’s head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “And I’m sorry for what happened to you. You’re all welcome here.”

They smile; a few of them sigh in relief. The younger ones cheer and clap. That’s when Adam walks outside and glances a few times between the bionic soldiers and Leo, Chase and Bree tangled in a hug.

“How come no one told me we were having a party?”

Inside, Douglas is nowhere to be found, but they guess he’s trying to sleep somewhere. Adam scrounges up all the blankets and bed linens he can find and transforms the living room into a giant pillow fort, and then he gets to work making forty cups of hot chocolate.

Leo and Chase go with Bree down to the lab, talking over each other as they try to catch her up on everything she missed the last nine months.

“… accidentally attacked Janelle with a cyborg shark…”

“I have a laser bo staff now!”

“Adam can blow really hard.”

“He has enhanced lung capacity.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“We’re action figures now! Well, me and Adam, anyway.”

“Slow down,” says the fastest girl in the world, crashing down on the couch in the corner of the lab. “Start with Uncle Dougie. We trust him now?”

Leo grabs two tomato juices and a Sprite from the mini-fridge Adam installed and sits down on the couch with Bree and Chase. “It took a while,” he tells her. “Big D blamed him for what happened to you. But he was really there for us when we needed him. He’s been living here since a little after Krane took you.”

Bree accepts the Sprite from Leo but shakes her head at what he says. “I thought Douglas was _working_ with Krane.”

“No,” Chase says. “He and Krane were on the outs ever since the first time they used the Triton App on us. Apparently Krane wanted to take us out… and Douglas just wanted us to join him.”

“Join him in being evil and terrorizing the country,” Bree scoffs.

“Nah,” Leo says, sipping his tomato juice. “He’s different now. He’s better. Plus— dude can _cook_.”

Bree makes a noncommittal noise and curls back into the couch, clutching her can of soda like it’s a security blanket. “I just…” she says, feeling the past hours— heck, the past _nine months_ — wash over her in waves. “Krane’s gone for good? You’re sure?”

“We blasted him with more volts than anyone could take,” Chase assures her. “Bionic or not.”

“And we know for sure that he’s gone,” Leo says. “Because you’re here. Because the Triton App stopped transmitting.”

“Oh,” she says, curling her knees up toward her chest. “So, um. Thank you. And Adam, too. Thanks, you guys, for getting me back.”

Chase looks at her a little funny. “Of course,” he says. “No thanks needed. I’d do it again. I love you.” He ducks his head, a little embarrassed, and then disappears across the lab to fiddle with something on his laptop before bed.

“I love you, too,” Leo assures her. “But I _will_ be accepting your thank you in the form of you becoming my super speedy Starbucks delivery person.”

“Done,” Bree laughs, leaning into Leo as she finishes her Sprite. They sit in silence until it’s time for Leo to head up to bed, for Adam to come down, for Bree to go to sleep in her own capsule for the first time in too long.

_“Come on, Bree,” Adam pleads, hands up. She’s got hers balled into fists and she’s facing him in a fighting stance. “Look, I know you always said you wanted to get far, far away from us, but… come on, I always thought you meant like moving to Hawaii or something!”_

_Behind him, Chase fends off attacks from Krane’s soldiers with his laser bo. S-B, who maybe used to be his sister, who maybe never would be again, lunges for Adam and kicks and punches him until he falls to his knees._

_“Bree, don’t make me fight you.”_

_She leans down to look into his eyes, hers unnaturally green. “You’re weak.” They’re Krane’s words, he knows that, but it’s his sister’s voice._

_“Just don’t want you to get hurt,” he says, resolve settling in his shoulders. “I never wanted you to get hurt.”_

_“Don’t worry,” she says, cruel and wrong and not-Bree. “I’ll be fine.”_

_“I really hope you will be,” Adam says, and he inhales._

_Then he exhales, and Bree goes flying backward._

At breakfast, Adam tries to make food for everyone. After he burns his fourth attempt at scrambled eggs, Leo takes over and starts dishing out a continental brunch for the bionic blank slates hanging out in their living room. He lays out bananas, bagels, cereal, crackers and oranges and tries to make sure no one goes hungry.

Not long after the majority of them get food and find a place to sit, Douglas wanders down from wherever he’d curled up for the night. He does a double take when he gets to the landing. “Leo,” he calls out, looking like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “What’s goin’ on?”

“You genetically engineered a kid obsessed with taking in strays,” Leo replies, glaring at Adam. “Eighteen years later, we’re out of Frosted Flakes.”

“Hey, Uncle Dad,” Adam greets him, tossing Douglas a banana. It sails past him and knocks over a lamp. “All the bionic soldiers live with us now! This is S-1, S-2, S-14, S-11…” He points them all out to Douglas. “And this is Bob,” he adds, putting a hand on the shoulder of the kid in front of him. “He asked me to name him. I’m gonna name everyone else too but I need to Google baby names first because none of them want to be called Spanky, Jojo or JJ Lightningfingers.”

“Adam, you know if you name them you’re going to get attached,” Douglas says, stepping around the kids sitting on the steps. “How did they find us?”

“They followed Bree,” Adam says. “Can we keep them?”

Douglas groans and rubs his temple, which Adam apparently takes as a yes. He grabs a bagel, slathers it with cream cheese and goes to sit with Bob and S-4.

Chase and Bree show up from downstairs not long after to find Douglas self-medicating with coffee while Leo and Adam try to bond with the soldiers.

“Want some shredded wheat?” Chase offers to Bree, still sounding like he’s treading on eggshells.

“Okay, I may have been kidnapped and mind-controlled for nine months,” Bree tells him, “but I do still have taste buds.” She grabs the whole box of Reese’s Puffs and heads for the couch. “Hey,” she says to S-1, motioning for her to move over. “I lived here first. Scooch.” S-1 rolls her eyes but complies, and Bree squeezes in beside her.

“Adam and I are working on getting real names for everyone,” Leo informs her and Chase.

“Ooh,” Bree says, “can I be Angelique?”

“Yeah, we were thinking you’d stick with ‘Bree,’” Leo says, shooting her a glance that clearly says _Not helpful_. “Adam named that kid over there ‘Bob,’ so we’ve only got 39 to go.”

“What about you, S-1?” Bree says, turning to the girl beside her. “Have you picked a name yet?”

She shrugs. “I’ve got no idea. I don’t feel like I really have any opinions. I’ll probably just take whatever anyone gives me.”

Leo takes a good look at her. “How about Charlotte?”

“Never mind, I do have an opinion,” she says, cringing. “My opinion is: _not_ ‘Charlotte.’”

Bree squints at her. “What about Myrtle?”

“Mmkay, I’m going to get the big guy to name me.”

“Hey,” Douglas says, tapping Bree on the shoulder. “Can we maybe go talk outside?”

She looks reluctant to leave her prime spot on the couch, but Bree nevertheless gets up to go follow her uncle-father out the front door.

“First of all,” he says, holding his hands out in front of him, “I’m really sorry for… for making Krane the monster that he is. Was. And I’m sorry you got wrapped up in it.” Bree raises an eyebrow like she’s waiting. “And… I’m sorry for kidnapping you? Both times. And blowing up the lab. And I’m sorry we couldn’t save you sooner. And I’m sorry Donnie got hurt.”

She sighs. “Yeah, okay,” she tells him. “You’re good. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“No, there’s more,” he says, fidgeting with his bracelets. “It’s the kids. I don’t think it’s safe to keep them here. And honestly, I’m surprised you, Chase and Leo are going along with it.”

Bree stares at him. “They’re just kids,” she says. “Like me. And Chase, and Leo. I mean, yeah, keeping them all in our house like a bunch of sardines isn’t _ideal_ , but we’ll figure something out.”

“It’s not an issue of space,” he says, looking uncomfortable. “They were with Krane for _way_ longer than you were. We can’t trust them. These ‘kids’ are still soldiers, and they could turn on us at any time.”

Bree folds her arms, fixing him with a glare she must’ve picked up from Tasha. “They’ve been under the control of _your_ Triton App their whole lives,” she reminds him. “And… I _know_ them. Even if I don’t _remember_ knowing them, I know them. Leo, Adam and Chase are my brothers, but… in a weird way, they’re all my brothers and sisters, too. They don’t have to be our enemies.” With every passing minute, she feels more like herself again. The longer she spends back at home, the more normal she feels. But while interacting with the strangers should probably make her feel more uneasy, it doesn’t. She _helps_ people. It’s what she knows. Helping the forty-odd people currently occupying her living room and eating all her Reese’s Puffs feels right. “Besides. They did bad stuff. _I_ did bad stuff. We’re in the same boat.”

Douglas just shakes his head, but he’s given up arguing the point. “ _You_ didn’t do anything,” he promises, and then disappears back into the house, leaving Bree feeling oddly like she both won and lost the argument.

“Hey,” Leo says to her when she goes back in. “We figured out a name for S-1. She’s _Taylor_.”

Bree glances at “Taylor” to make sure she’s actually a fan of the name. “I like it,” Taylor says, giving her a nod.

Douglas seems deep in conversation with a cluster of kids across the room, so at least he’s getting acclimated to the situation. Chase and Adam are trying to learn names as fast as they’re giving them out.

“I’m gonna go back to the hospital and check in with Mom,” Leo tells Bree. “See how Big D’s doing. Wanna come?”

“Yeah,” Bree says. “I’ll even give you a lift.”

“Great,” Leo says, turning around to face the room. “Adam, you’re in charge of the kids. Chase, you’re in charge of Adam.”

And they’re off.

_“You created the Triton App,” Tasha says one night, sitting in the great room with Douglas and sipping on coffee that’s mostly milk. “Can’t you just disable it?”_

_Donald’s been pretty worn down lately, but Douglas looks, if possible, even more tired. The lines in his face have been etched their permanently since Bree disappeared. “I’ve tried,” he tells her after a too-long pause. “I didn’t really expect it to work. It didn’t. Krane’s technology is too sophisticated.”_

_“Oh.” Tasha stares into her coffee, feeling simultaneously desperately restless and hopelessly exhausted. Bree is Douglas’s daughter, but she’s her daughter too. Her BFF. The lone other girl in a house full of guys._

_It’s killing her not being able to see her, to say goodnight and good morning, to brush her hair, to gossip about boys._

_“I’m sorry,” Douglas says, and she knows what he means. He’s sorry to her, and to Bree, and to Donald and Leo and Chase and Adam. It’s his fault in so many ways, what happened— but it’s obviously hurting him, too. It’s hard for her to blame him when he looks so distraught, which is a shame because for months now, blaming Douglas was the only thing she_ could _do. It made her feel useful._

_It kept her from blaming herself._

Tasha’s drifting in and out of a nap beside Donald’s hospital bed when Bree and Leo show up brandishing flowers and balloons like they’re congratulating their dad on continuing to barely cling to life.

“Hey, sweetie,” she says, forcing a smile when she stands up and gives Bree a big hug. Bree still seems a little disoriented about… well, everything. But she’s getting better. Tasha gives her a good long look and a kiss on the forehead, and then she goes to hug her son.

“How’s he doing?” Leo asks while Bree slides into Tasha’s chair so she can look down at Donald.

Tasha looks from Leo to Bree to her husband’s unconscious form, trying to decide how much is okay to lie to her kids. “The same,” she tells him. “Sometimes he wakes up and says some things, but he’s not really aware.”

“Hey, that could work in our favor,” Leo points out with a fakey smile, leaning over Mr. Davenport. “Hey Big D, I got a C-minus on my English paper. And also I broke your travel mug.”

Tasha fixes him with a steely glare. “That was my mug.”

Leo blinks. “Can _I_ be in a coma, too?”

Tasha rolls her eyes and moves right along. “How’s everything going back home? The house must feel so empty without us.”

Bree and Leo freeze, looking back and forth between each other and Tasha. “Well, uh,” Leo says, trying to stall. “No, no, Mom, home’s fine. Kind of cramped, really.”

“What?”

“All the bionic soldiers followed us home and they’re living with us,” Bree blurts out. Tasha’s eyebrows fly upward. Leo just looks mildly betrayed. “I caved!” she whispers to Leo. “I can’t help it!”

Tasha puts her hands on her hips and stares them down. “You let the bionic soldiers who tried to _kill us_ live with us _in our house_?”

Bree ignores Leo’s advice to “ _Retreat! Retreat!_ ” and steamrolls forward. “Yeah, but on the bright side, I’m not evil anymore!” And she flashes her stepmom her most winning smile.

“You’d better hope your father never wakes up,” Tasha says sternly, but then her face falls. “I… I mean… I hope your father wakes up.”

“He will,” Bree says, taking Mr. Davenport’s limp hand. “He has to.”

_“Bree.” For the first time in the face-off against Krane and the soldiers, Donald actually looks scared. “Bree, I know you’re in there.”_

_“You’re right,” she says with a sneer that’s all Krane and nothing of his daughter. With a flash, she’s on his left. “And now I’m over here.” She whirls to his other side. “Now I’m here.” She blurs behind him. “And here.” When she zips back in front of him, she’s much closer than before. “You’re not going to win, Davenport.”_

_He holds up his gun above his head in a non-threatening posture. It’s probably not safe to let his guard down, but then again, none of this was safe. “I don’t need to win,” he tells her. “Your brothers are doing that. I’m just here to make sure you come home with us.”_

_In the blink of an eye, she’s on top of him, assaulting him, every swing of her fists finding its mark. Donald sinks to the ground and she looks down at him. “I’m not your little princess.”_

Eventually, Leo gets fidgety and tells Tasha and Bree he’s going to go home and make sure the house hasn’t burned down.

“I really don’t think we need to worry about the soldiers,” Bree tells him without taking her eyes off her dad.

“Yeah, it’s not the soldiers I’m worried about,” Leo says. “It’s Adam.” He gives his mom a quick hug and pats Mr. Davenport’s arm as he lays unconscious. “Bree, you staying or going?”

Her eyes flit upward; she looks startled by the question. “Staying,” she says in a small voice. “I’ll stay.”

Leo nods, and then, instead of just waving goodbye, he crouches down beside her so he can give her a big bear hug. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you later.” And he heads out.

“He was worried about you,” Tasha tells her in the quiet after Leo’s gone. She found a chair out in the hall and sits on the opposite side of her husband now, looking at Bree over the bed.

“I know,” Bree says, but she’s looking down at Mr. Davenport. “He trained us to be able to fight the bad guys. Not fight _with_ them.”

“Oh,” Tasha says, her face falling. “No, honey, I meant… I meant Leo. Leo was worried about you. He barely slept. Or ate. Everyone was a mess.” They’ve each got one of Donald’s hands now. He lays there, unknowing, unaware. “Donald missed you, too. Everybody did. But he wasn’t disappointed in you. You know that, right?” Bree just looks down, memorizing the rivets in her father’s palm. Caitlin taught her how to read palms once, once upon a time. Her father’s lifeline looks strong, stark against the paleness of his hand.

The little lines on his vital monitors seem to say otherwise.

“I wanted to come back,” Bree says, her throat too dry. “I… I think. I don’t remember anything. But I think I must have wanted to come back.”

“I know you did,” Tasha says, and she lets go off Donald’s hand momentarily to reach across the bed and give Bree’s hand a squeeze. “I’m gonna go get some lunch.” She asks Bree the same question Leo asked. “Staying or going?”

Bree gives the same answer she gave Leo.

Tasha double-checks that she has her wallet in hand and then heads for the cafeteria a floor below, leaving Bree alone in the room with the comatose body of the man who raised her.

“Hey,” she says after a long while, when the silence just gets unbearable. “Hey, Mr. Davenport. I’m here. Waiting for you to wake up.” She sighs, watching his heartbeat blip-blip-blip on the screen. Is it too slow? Too fast? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what’s normal. (She never did.) “You gotta wake up,” she says, feeling the tears spark in her eyes. “Who else is gonna embarrass me in public and give me poor life advice?” She grows more solemn. “Please. Please don’t leave me here. Everybody’s… I think everybody’s scared of me.” She sniffs, swiping at her eyes with her one free hand. “ _I’m_ kind of scared of me.” Mr. Davenport shifts in the cot, growing restless. She grips his hand tighter. “Can you hear me? Are you in there?” Is this what it was like for them? Facing someone impassive, impenetrable, who looks so much like family? “I’m sorry,” she says, barely audible. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Mr. Davenport twitches on the bed; his eyelids flutter. Bree freezes all over. “Tsh— Tasha,” Mr. Davenport mumbles, grasping at her hand. “Tasha? Tasha?”

“No, it’s me,” she says, eyes brimming with tears as she leans closer. “It’s Bree. I’m here.”

“No,” he says, suddenly clear, almost-lucid. He jerks away from her on the hospital cot. “No, no, no.” His hand shakes; Bree hangs onto it.

“No, don’t worry, it’s okay,” she says, feeling desperate. “It’s _really_ me, and I’m back and I’m okay. Krane’s not controlling me anymore. Everything’s okay.”

“No,” he says again, and his eyes fly open, wide and white with fear. That’s the thing that makes Bree’s whole body feel like a big slab of ice. “Don’t, d-don’t, please don’t,” Mr. Davenport pleads, sounding out of his mind with panic. She’s never seen him scared like this.

It’s because of her.

Davenport’s monitors start beeping like crazy and a couple of nurses run into the room calling out orders and checking his vitals. Amidst all the commotion, Bree backs herself into a corner of the room and shrinks down against the wall, watching the hospital staff trying to calm down this terrified stranger who is her dad, wondering and wondering what she must have done to give him that look of gut-wrenching fear in his eyes.

_“S-1 says you hesitated when confronting the Dooley boy.” Krane’s angry, the mechanics in his jaw twitching. “You’re supposed to be a leader, S-B. A warrior.”_

_Her face is blank, her mind is blank. “I don’t know what happened, Mr. Krane,” she says, and she’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know what happened. “Douglas Davenport was there. Maybe he messed with my bionics.”_

_Krane scowls. “You shouldn’t be susceptible to your father’s influence.”_

_“He’s not my father.” She says it suddenly, without thinking. A knee-jerk reaction. “Donald Davenport is my father.”_

_That makes Krane livid. Her head fizzles with electricity; he’s cranking up the intensity of her bionics, her aggression. “False,” he tells her. “You have no family, S-B. You have no father.”_

Tasha shows up again after the nurses have stabilized Donald, but Bree’s still crouched in the corner. “What happened?” she asks, looking back and forth from Bree to the man in the bed.

“He was… talking a little,” Bree chokes out, a faraway look in her eyes. “I’m gonna go. I’m… I’m gonna go home. See how things are… I’m gonna go.”

“Okay,” Tasha says apprehensively, watching her zoom out of the room. In her wake, the hospital bedsheets flutter just slightly.

Back at the house, activity’s starting to wind down. Adam’s apparently been teaching the kids about all the important aspects of non-soldier, non-bionic life, like popcorn and video games and annoying Chase.

“Hi, Bree,” her big brother says to her when she walks in the front door. All the kids echo him back to her, “Hi, Bree!”

“Hey,” she says, distracted. “Douglas around?”

“Lab,” Adam tells her, turning his attention and his laser vision to the task of popping more bags of popcorn for their multitudinous guests. Bree makes a beeline for the elevator and heads down to the basement, where she finds Chase and Douglas hiding out.

“Hey,” Chase says. “Have the bionic kids magically vanished? Have our lives gone back to normal yet?”

“No such luck,” Bree says, sliding into a stool across from her brother and her uncle-father. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“I think I know what it is,” Chase says with a small smile. “And you don’t need to worry, I kept up with _all_ your homework while you were away. You’re making better grades than ever before.”

Oh, jeez. She hasn’t even thought about school. “Great,” she says. “But, uh, actually I wanted to ask Douglas something.”

“Oh,” Chase says, looking mildly affronted. “Alright then.” He refocuses on whatever gadget he’s fidgeting with.

“What can I help you with?” Douglas says, with all the obsequiousness of someone who knows he’s being judged hard for years of parental neglect and attempting to obliterate and/or mind control his family.

“It’s my chip,” she says, trying to put on a brave face. She’s still rattled from what happened at the hospital. “I need you to check it out, make sure there’s no viruses or Triton Apps or whatnot that might make me go all… Bad Bree again.”

“Fun fact, brie actually doesn’t go bad, it just over-ripens,” Douglas informs her, his years in cooking school making an appearance. “Brie is a really robust cheese. I think it gets better with—”

“Just take a look at my chip,” Bree says, rolling her eyes. She grabs a chip extractor and heads for her capsule.

“Okay,” Douglas says, hitting a few buttons on the cyber desk. “But you know, you really don’t need to worry. I did a full remote scan of your chip earlier today. Everything’s fine.”

“I guess,” she says, standing up straight in her capsule to align her neck with the extractor behind her. “I just need to be sure.”

“Gotcha.”

Douglas toggles a few switches and she feels the tug at the back of her neck as the chip extractor does its thing. When the process is complete, Bree steps away and takes the chip out in her hand, marveling at it. For the bit of tech that makes her everything she is, it looks surprisingly small and fragile in her hand.

“Lemme see,” Douglas says, holding his hand out.

“Yeah, one sec,” Bree says, entranced by the chip. The chip has the super speed, the turbo leap, the agility. The chip has the vocal manipulation. The chip has the Triton App. The chip isn’t her.

As Chase and Douglas watch, Bree drops the chip purposefully to the floor and lifts her foot to crush it under her boot.

_When they get to the junkyard, Adam knows his job. Douglas and Donald go for Krane, Leo and Chase pick off the bionic soldiers._

_Adam’s supposed to get Bree._

_As he fends off a few soldiers, tossing them away from Chase, he wonders why they gave him the responsibility to track down Bree and keep her from getting hurt— and keep her from hurting anyone. They’ve tried talking her down from the Triton App before. It never works._

_But it’s his job. His responsibility. His little sister._

_Adam finds her at Krane’s side, defending him from attacks by the two Mr. Davenports. Just seeing her alive makes him feel better, even though she’s not herself._

_“Hey, Bree,” he calls out, managing to surprise her when he comes up from behind her. His arms lock around her waist and he lifts her up. “Time to catch some air.”_

“Hey.”

Adam’s arms wrap around her and he lifts her completely off the floor, feet kicking uselessly in the air. “Put me down, Adam.”

“What the heck are you doing?” He’d been coming to the lab to ask Chase if Bob could play with Davenport’s drone, only to find the confusing and dramatic scene of Bree posed to destroy her chip.

“She’s trying to smash her chip,” Chase says, running out from behind the cyber desk and scooping Bree’s chip up into safety. “Bree, what’s going on?”

Still struggling in Adam’s arms, she glares at Chase. “You _know_. You all _know_ what’s going on. A madman used that thing to take control of me and make me hurt my family. And I can’t ever let that happen again, okay? Ever. Ever!”

With the chip secure in Chase’s hand, Adam feels safe letting her stand, but he still keeps his hands on her shoulders. “Krane’s gone, Bree,” he says. “And there’s a block on your chip for the Triton App, stronger than ever before.”

She looks angry and desperate and frazzled, but she says nothing.

“We got you back,” Chase says, sounding more emotional than usual. “And we want you to _stay_ back. All of you, bionics and all.”

Craning her neck, she looks up at Adam, then again at Chase. They look so earnest, so concerned.

But they’re lying, by omission at least. She knows it.

“Who put Mr. Davenport in the hospital?” she asks, and both their faces fall. Even Douglas looks awkward. “Well? Who did it? Who hurt our dad so badly that he needs a bunch of wires plugged into him to keep him alive?”

“It was one of Krane’s bionic soldiers,” Douglas jumps in with the script.

“Yeah, uh-huh, you told me that,” Bree says, feeling claustrophobic and alone, even surrounded by family. “What was her name, Dougie?” He blanches. “Was it S-B?”

“We were going to tell you,” Chase says, his face crumpling in on itself and he’s still hanging onto her chip. “We were going to wait until everything went back to normal and then we were going to tell you. I mean, you just got back. We just got you back two days ago. You weren’t ready—”

“For what? To know the truth? That our dad’s in the hospital because of what _I_ did to him?” She looks furious but makes no move to get her chip back from Chase. “And look, I know. I know it wasn’t really me. And I know you all tried to stop me, right? You tried to get me back to myself? I don’t remember anything but I _know_ my family. You told me to remember I was your sister. You told me to remember who I am.”

She throws Adam off of her in one move, taking him by surprise, and rounds on Chase, red splotches overtaking her face as the tears clump in her eyes and on her cheeks. “ _This_ is who I am,” she says, and she’s going for angry and dramatic but it just sounds pathetic. Broken. Defeated. “I’m destroying my chip. Nothing you say can stop that.”

“I love you?” Adam tries.

Chase jumps on that tack. “I love you too, Bree.”

“Well that’s not gonna help anything,” Douglas grumbles, stepping in between Bree and Chase so he’s facing his daughter. “Look, princess, the truth is it won’t really matter if you smash your chip. Krane developed a version of the Triton App that can control anyone, bionic or not. Now, he’s gone but someone else just as evil could easily replicate that technology and you’d be back in the same boat whether you had a chip or not.”

The tears feel cold on her face. “What?”

“You can destroy your chip, but it won’t completely eliminate the risk of you ever hurting someone,” Douglas says slowly, trying to find the line between father and uncle and former enemy. “It’ll just make it that much harder for you to _help_ people.”

So that’s it. So it’s a lost cause. Krane might be gone, but the Triton App as a concept can’t be destroyed. And it can take her over all over again. And Douglas, and Tasha, and Leo. Mr. Davenport. Heck, even Perry, not that anyone would notice much of a difference.

Against her better judgment, Bree leans into her father, her uncle, the man who created her and the man who created the Triton App.

Bemused, Douglas just holds her as he looks up at his sons’ broken expressions.

 _“Why’re you doing this, Krane?” Douglas calls out across the junkyard. He smells smoke and his feet feel heavy, and he wishes he were still hiding behind the bush yards behind him. “Why attack my family? Why take over all these kids?_ I’m _the one who turned on you.”_

_Krane smirks at him, backlit from the glow of the satellite dish. “It’s not about you,” he says, and it shouldn’t sting but it does. When Douglas was cut off by his brother, he clung to the next person to act like they cared about him. So what if it was an unstable power-hungry maniac? They had that in common! “This was never about you. I want control. If I can use your technology to get it, I will. But it was never about you.”_

_That’s the difference, ultimately. Yeah, Krane’s taller and stronger than Douglas, and Douglas has better hair— in his opinion— but they meshed for so long because they were so similar. Their biggest difference?_

_Douglas didn’t mindlessly seek power and control. He went after a few morally askew options, cut corners, picked a pocket or two, sure. When he created his bionic kids, he told himself it was for money and prestige. He told himself he always meant to auction them off._

_Truth? If Donald hadn’t stolen them away in the dead of the night, Douglas would have kept them. Raised them. Loved them. He didn’t create a horde of weapons. He created children._

_Krane did everything he did for control._

_Douglas just wanted a family._

That night, Bree, Leo, Adam and Chase all clump together in Chase’s capsule to sleep. They used to do that occasionally, back in the days before Leo had a growth spurt and Chase filled out a little. On cold nights, on bad days, they slept all bunched together.

It can’t be comfortable— it sure doesn’t _look_ comfortable— but Bree’s sleeping soundly instead of tossing with nightmares, so Douglas figures their sleeping arrangements work well enough.

 Upstairs, amidst sleeping piles of bionic former soldiers, Douglas writes out chicken scratch train-of-thought messages to himself, reminders of scans to run on the kids and house upkeep and things Donnie should be handling. Bree agreed not to smash her chip, but she refused to put it back in. Currently, Douglas has it safely stowed away in a compartment of the lab.  

“Mr. Davenport?”

He jumps about a foot in the air and then pivots to see one of the bionic soldiers watching him. The main one. The one Leo named.

“Hey, Taylor,” he says, sounding almost as old and tired as he feels. “Don’t call me Mr. Davenport, that’s Donnie’s name. You can just call me Douglas.”

“Oh,” she says, keeping her voice low so she doesn’t wake her siblings. “Well, Douglas, I was wondering if you knew… I keep getting these headaches. And flashbacks. About a man named Victor Krane.”

“Preaching to the choir, sister,” Douglas says with a soft laugh. “Truth is, Krane was your creator.”

“But he was evil.” It’s not a question.

“Sure, okay, you were created by an evil madman,” Douglas sighs. “But I was evil when I made Adam, Bree and Chase and they turned out okay.”

“You call her Bree,” Taylor says, sounding confused. “She was S-B, and I was S-1. But now she’s Bree and I’m Taylor.”

“Yeah, I get why that could be confusing,” Douglas says. “In med school, I was Dr. Doogie. I don’t know why. It was a terrible decision.”

“The nickname?”

“Med school.”

“Ah.” He’s an awkward person by nature, and she just recently stopped being a minion of a bionic psychopath. So the conversation’s not exactly stellar. “We can’t stay here forever.” Again, it’s not a question. “I get that this is temporary. I just wonder… what’s gonna happen to me and all my brothers and sisters once Mr. Davenport wakes up?”

Douglas studies her for a moment, thinking about his own tenuous relationship with his brother. When Bree was taken, Donald accepted him under the roof only because he could help get her back. Now that she’s back, he wonders if that offer even still stands.

Douglas doesn’t know what’s going to happen to Taylor and the others once Donnie wakes up. And truth be told, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to himself.

The next day, Leo’s being super nice to Bree and tiptoeing around her like she might shatter. Adam and Chase told him about her intent to smash her chip and it’s driving him nuts that they’re all acting like nothing happened.

“Banana?” he offers.

“No thanks Leo,” Bree says.

“Apple? Grapes? Grape _fruit_?”

“ _No thanks Leo_ ,” Bree says, grabbing her standard bowl of cereal and kicking Bob out of her seat at the table. “And you don’t need to sound so worried about me. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, she’s not just fine,” Bob pipes up. “She’s _fi-i-i-ine_.”

Bree blinks. “I spoke too soon.” Adam rolls his eyes and walks Bob over toward the window, convincing him to leave Bree alone. For the moment.

Leo, on the other hand, has no intention of leaving her alone. “I’m worried about you,” he says without preamble, sitting down at the table with a cup of coffee that’s beige with cream. “Adam and Chase are, too, they’re just scared to say it.”

“I’m fine,” she says again, completely unconvincing. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, right,” he mumbles over the lip of his coffee mug. He sips and thinks. Right now, there are too many pieces of his life moving too fast for all of them to fit together. Big D in the hospital, Bree back but messed up inside, the bionic soldiers camped out in their living room. He feels helpless, just like before he got the bionic arm. “Do you want to come with me to visit Big D today?”

Barely perceptible, Bree flinches in panic. He knows something went down at the hospital yesterday, but she hasn’t told him what. Just that whatever it was, now she knows the truth about how Davenport ended up there. “No, I’m good,” she says in a small voice. “I think I’ll just stay here and help out with the kids.”

So Leo finishes his coffee and vanishes off to the hospital, mind buzzing with all the pieces of his life currently teetering on the edge of a gaping chasm. There has to be something he can do. There just has to be.

_Late nights, after Adam and Chase have already climbed into their capsules and fallen asleep, Donald stays in the atrium of the lab at one of his workbenches, working until his fingers grow numb. He tries creating something to block the Triton App signal. He tries to build something that will work like the Override App but that Krane hasn’t blocked. And, sometimes, he just tries to invent something for the heck of it, to keep his head from spinning out of control._

_“Hey, Big D,” Leo says suddenly from beside him. If he weren’t so exhausted, he would jump in surprise. As it is, he just kind of lurches upward._

_“Hey,” he says, running a tired hand across his tired face. “What are you doing up?”_

_“Couldn’t sleep.” He lifts a gear from the desk and fiddles with it for a moment. “I keep worrying about Bree. It’s been four months… and having her gone is starting to feel normal.” He can’t meet Donald’s eyes, and he sounds guilty._

_“I know what you mean,” Donald says, and Leo feels a burst of affection for his stepdad. He might be the only person who also understands that feeling of helplessness coupled with responsibility. It’s_ their _job to keep an eye on Adam, Bree and Chase, but there’s also nothing on earth they can do. Douglas is kind of in the same boat, but kind of not. He doesn’t know Bree like they do. He doesn’t love Bree like they do. “You should know— Adam and Chase are really, really glad you’re around. I am too, but that goes without saying. And when we get Bree back…_ when _we get Bree back, she’ll be glad, too. She’ll be glad you kept everything running smoothly when we felt like we were falling apart.”_

Douglas ends up tagging along to Leo’s trip to the hospital. When they get to Donald’s room, he takes one look at his big brother, pales, and then turns to look at Tasha. “Look, I know I just got here, but uh, I think I’m gonna go outside for a cigarette.”

Tasha’s eyes flash. “Yeah, me too.”

Leo stares at his mother. He hasn’t heard her say that since long before she met Donald. “I thought you quit smoking.”

Tasha leans over her husband and gives him a light kiss on the forehead that he can’t feel. Her eyes and shoulders look horribly weighted down. “So did I,” she tells Leo, and then heads outside with Douglas, leaving Leo alone in the room with his stepdad.

Which is just perfect for his plan.

“Big D,” he says, feeling oddly guilty despite the fact that he’s here to make things right. “We need you. Bree especially. So… if this doesn’t work, I’m _really_ sorry.”

Standing beside his stepfather’s too-still body, Leo takes his right hand to his chest and _pulls_ , watching the energy drain from himself to his hand, an amorphous starburst of _life_. He holds it in his hand for a moment, staring at it.

And then he plunges the energy directly into Donald Davenport.

_“You’re right,” Donald says to his brother, shaking his head even as the words come out of his mouth. He hates it when Douglas is right. And he hates it even more when it means putting Leo in danger. “His days of being ‘mission specialist’ are behind us. I should’ve put him in the field a long time ago. It’s just…”_

_“I get it,” Douglas tells him. “You’re worried about the kid.” Bree’s been gone almost nine months now. Too long. Donald’s terrified of losing someone else. “You remember when we were kids? And you kept trying to stop me from climbing the tree with the tire swing?”_

_“Yeah, and you should’ve listened to me,” Donald replies, sounding irritated. “You broke your arm.”_

_“So did Leo,” Douglas points out. “And he was doin’ everything right. Staying in the shadows, hiding behind pillars, hiding_ under _pillars…” Donald shoots him a stern look. “Point is, the kid knows what he’s doing. I want to make sure what he’s doing packs a punch.”_

_“I said you were right,” Donald says. “The energy transference ability gives him an edge. I’m just worried that it also makes him a target.”_

_Douglas pats him on the shoulder. “We’re all targets now, Donnie,” he reminds him. “Bionics or not.”_

Donald’s awash in a sea of light and shadows and old memories, good and bad. Sometimes he feels like he’s floating, other times he feels like he’s drowning. Every now and then he hears a familiar voice, usually his wife’s. And no matter how hard he tries, he can’t swim upward to meet her, to tell her it’s okay and she can stop crying, he’s fine, really. He can’t get the words out.

And then suddenly he crashes abruptly through the surface and it’s _invigorating_. Everything bright and clear and loud, everything suddenly back in reach, tangible, _real_.

Absurdly, he feels like dancing.

That’s when his gaze lands on his stepson, who’s supporting himself on the rails of the hospital cot. “Leo! Are you okay?”

Leo snorts, unable to hold in the laugh. “Uh, you’re the one who was in the coma.”

“Coma,” he says, trying to catch himself up. “Coma, right. Jeez, how long was I out?”

He doesn’t miss the spark of mischief that lights up Leo’s eyes. “Twenty years,” he says. “Davenport Industries merged with a cosmetics company and now solely makes make-up. Also we’re ruled by giant bugs.”

Still groggy from the coma, Donald has to do a double take before he remembers that Leo hasn’t aged at all and is obviously lying. “How long really?”

“Almost a week.”

“Almost a week,” he repeats. The next thought to pop into his head is— “Bree?”

“She’s fine,” Leo says immediately. “I mean, she’s pretty messed up emotionally and psychologically, but like, so would you if you spent nine months being marionetted around by an evil bionic maniac.” Suddenly, he looks uncomfortable. “She, uh. She did take out her chip, though. And she won’t put it back in.”

Eyes wide, Donald nods, and then he starts throwing off the sheets and trying to stand. “I have to get home. Get— get the nurses, I have to go see her. Everyone.”

“Okay, take it easy,” Leo says, beginning to move toward the door.

“Hey,” Donald says, reaching out like he’s close enough to grab Leo by the shoulder. “How’d I come back? Did the doctors do something? I mean, granted, I know God wouldn’t let someone as awesome as me die, but what else happened?”

Leo looks at him for a long moment and then says, “Uh, I don’t know.”

Donald’s about to call him out for lying when Leo suddenly collapses to the floor.

_She’s back at Mission Creek High, but she doesn’t know why. Her boss tells her where to go, and her mind tells her what to do, and she does it. S-B moves in sync with S-3 through the halls of the high school, silent and speedy, seeking out their target._

_He’s standing with his back to them, rifling through his locker. Leo Dooley. Supposed to be smart, but he’s stupid enough to show himself in public after Krane put a target on him._

_S-B zips forward and slams the locker door in Dooley’s face. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”_

_“Shouldn’t you be my sister?” he counters, but she can tell he’s scared. He’s always scared. S-B grabs his non-bionic arm while S-3 prowls forward, eyeing Dooley like a hyena. They work well together, she and S-3._

_“We’re supposed to take him to Krane,” S-3 reminds her. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a few scratches on the special delivery.”_

_“Bree,” Dooley tries, but his heart’s not in it. It’s been too long. “I know this isn’t you. I know you’re in there.”_

_The halls are empty. No one’s coming to save him, and he knows it. S-B grins like a shark at S-3. “Go ahead,” she says. “Have some fun.”_

_S-3 gathers up a lightning ball in his hand, so similar to Dooley’s, and launches it at the kid._

_At the last second, S-B jerks sideways. Her super speed sends her three feet to the left, and the projectile hits the lockers, leaving Dooley unharmed._

_S-B shakes her head, looking at S-3. She looks incredibly confused. “Sorry,” she says. “Must’ve been a glitch.”_

While Adam’s trying to keep the kids preoccupied with an array of video games, Bree paints her nails and tries not to think. It’s kind of comforting, the smooth repetitive action of the nail polish. When her chip’s in, she usually goes too fast and leaves streaks and stray polish on her fingertips.

These are careful strokes, an even finish. When there’s a knock on the door, she’s still blowing her nails dry. “Chase?”

“I heard it,” he says, putting on hold a chess game with one of the bionic kids and going to answer the door. Chase swings it open and freezes. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Bree hears the panic and venom in his voice and whirls around to see their guest— someone she doesn’t remember but _knows_ immediately. “S-3.” Her nails forgotten, Bree stumbles toward the door to stand by her brother. Instead of asking why S-3 is here, though, she says to him, “What took you so long?”

The former bionic solider looks frazzled, dirt caked into his nails, his eyes clouded. “I got thrown far from the junkyard during the fight,” he says, sounding stilted and shaken. “I woke up at night and everyone was gone. I’ve been scraping by, scavenging… but then I picked up the signal from my brothers and sisters.”

Chase whirls around to look accusingly at Taylor. “What?” she says, momentarily glancing away from the TV. “I didn’t have a headcount. I just wanted to make sure we didn’t lose anybody.”

“I can’t remember anything,” S-3 says, still looking dazed. “But…” His eyes find Bree’s. “I know you. You’re not my sister, not like S-1, but I know you. S-B.”

It hits her with a pang. It’s been a week. She wants S-B to die. She wants the obedient evil cyborg she was to vanish forever, and she doesn’t want anyone to ever call her by that designation again. “It’s Bree,” she says coldly, and then warms up. He’s just as lost and confused as the rest of them. “Come on in.”

S-3 walks in and immediately gets mobbed by the other bionic kids, who all clump around him amid choruses of “we missed you” and “what happened” and “that’s Adam, he’s great.” Meanwhile, Chase leans over to Bree and shoots her a concerned glance.

“He shouldn’t be here,” he says lowly. “He tried to kill me.”

Bree scoffs. “ _I_ tried to kill you.”

“Yeah, but he’s been mysteriously gone for a little too long,” Chase replies, folding his arms. “Who knows what could have happened to him?”

“Remember that time Adam got lost for a weekend and we found him at the park eating churros and trying to make friends with a squirrel?” she reminds him. “That’s probably what S-3 did. Pretty much.”

“Maybe,” Chase says, but he doesn’t get a chance to finish the conversation. Behind them, Donald and Tasha stumble through the door escorting an elderly man who looks an awful lot like Leo.

_When the dust clears, Krane’s nowhere to be found and all the soldiers have fallen unconscious. The junkyard looks innocuous, weirdly so given the showdown they just survived. Chase releases his brothers, panting from the exertion of linking their bionics together._

_It was worth it. They won._

_That’s when he hears Douglas yelling for them and they run around the unmoving forms of the soldiers toward another, all-too-familiar unmoving form._

_Mr. Davenport’s lying on the ground, motionless and pale, and Chase’s heart sinks. “What happened?” he warbles, sinking to his knees beside his father. He checks Davenport’s pulse and chest even though he sees Douglas doing the same thing. Douglas doesn’t have Chase’s super senses. Douglas doesn’t have Chase’s medical know-how. Douglas doesn’t have… Douglas isn’t Donald. That’s it, square and simple._

_Chase trusts him now, sure. He’s family. But despite their similarities, despite the fact that Douglas created him, Chase knows who his dad is, and it’s not Douglas. “What happened?” he demands again._

_“Bree,” Douglas says, one hand hovering above his brother’s chest. “Bree happened.”_

Downstairs in the lab, Donald has no time to enjoy being home again and up on his feet. He’s working ferociously over his desk, mixing chemicals with a kind of manic energy. On a stool beside him, Old Leo sits wrapped in a blanket, shivering every now and then. While Adam keeps an eye on the kids upstairs, Chase, Bree, Tasha and Douglas pace around the lab in a flutter.

“Good to see you up and around,” Douglas says at one point, sounding awkward and clumsy around his older brother. Donald just snaps at him to go check the acidic readings of the chemicals on the counter.

Donald tries one of his serums, and Leo just coughs and pulls his blanket closer around himself. Nothing changes. Nothing gets better. Donald can’t even feel happy to be back, consumed as he is with finding a cure for Leo’s rapid aging brought on by using his energy transference to save him.

The elevator doors slide open and Adam runs out, the bionic kids in tow. “Hey, I know you told me to keep an eye on them up there but I’m worried about Leo and I wanna know what’s going on so I’m gonna keep an eye on them down here, okay?” he says to Chase, and then he doesn’t wait for an answer. He runs to Leo, scoops him up like a rag doll and holds him close. “Buddy, are you okay?”

“Adam, put him down,” Donald says, and Adam complies.

“I’m fine,” Leo croaks. “Just old. I can finally get us into R-rated movies.” His weak joke gets deterred by his even weaker coughing.

Adam hovers over him, even more of a worried mama bear than Tasha herself. He’s always been the overprotective one.

“So,” Tasha says quietly to Bree, “these kids… what’s their deal?”

Bree glances from Tasha to the hordes of bionic teens. “They’re… from an exchange student program?” she tries. Tasha’s not buying it. “They… they _were_ Krane’s bionic army. But with him gone the Triton App’s deactivated… just like it did with me. They’re just normal, run-of-the-mill teenagers with normal, run-of-the-mill bionic superpowers. Just like me, Adam, Chase and Leo!”

She hems and haws for a moment. “There are _four_ of you,” she points out. “There are _forty_ of them. And how do you know we can trust them?”

Every time that question comes up, Bree feels it like a heavy stone on her chest. How can they trust the kids? How can they trust _her_? It’s the same question, even if the ones asking it don’t realize that.

“We just have to trust them,” Bree says. “We just have to.”

But they’re distracted at that moment when Leo careens off his stool and hits the floor with a sick _thud_ , Adam looking terrified as he kneels beside his little brother. Donald rushes around the desk to lean over Leo.

“What’s going on?” Chase asks, peering over the people crowding around Leo.

Donald looks up at him, horror etched into the lines of his face. “His time’s running out.”

Everything slows down for a second. For Bree, it’s like when she’s running and the world around her feels sluggish and unmoving. Leo lies unconscious on the floor, too still, too still, and no one knows what to do. Tasha and Donald look heartbroken, panicked, and her brothers just seem confused.

And then S-3 steps forward, one hand tugging at his chest. Before her eyes, the new addition soldier, the kid who hasn’t even gotten a name yet, kneels down beside Leo and transfers some of his own energy into Leo.

Taking his lead, the other former soldiers gather around, each of them carefully extracting a ball of light from within them and adding to the collection of energy building inside Leo’s limp, aging body. Taylor holds her breath as she places the energy from herself into Leo, and when she stands up, Bree clutches as her arm.

“Do me,” she whispers, eyes on Leo. “Do it to me.”

Taylor looks astonished. “Bree, I don’t even know if it works like—”

“Do it,” Bree demands, kneeling beside Leo, one hand reaching for his. Beside her, Taylor shrugs and uses her own energy transference ability to take some of Bree’s life force and move it into Leo. As the soldiers move back, Bree keeps hanging onto Leo’s hand.

She doesn’t let go until she sees his eyes open.

Upstairs in the kitchen, Donald uses the counter like a podium and addresses his family and the forty bionic soldiers clustered in his home. “Alrighty,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Now that we’re all done _dying_ , let’s sort some things out. Douglas! Are all the ‘Funeral Mishaps’ episodes still on the DVR?”

“Aye-aye,” his brother says. “I watched a few without you but I didn’t delete them.”

“I’ll take it,” Donald says. “Second order of business, uh, _why is the bionic army that tried to kill us all in our house_?”

“I got this one,” Leo says, stepping away from Tasha, who still hasn’t recovered from seeing him rapidly age and pass out. “After we took out Krane, all of his bionic soldiers stopped being influenced by the Triton App and now they’re just like us, normal bionic teenagers.” Behind him, Bob tries to take a huge bite out of Tasha’s large decorative apple. “Normal is a relative term,” Leo clarifies.

“Donald,” Tasha says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “They saved Leo.”

“Yeah, but they also tried to take over the world.”

Tasha shrugs. “So did Dougie,” she points out. “              But now he’s a perfectly respectable citizen. And he and I kick butt at family game night.”

Bree looks over at Mr. Davenport, giving him her best sad-face. “At least give them a chance,” she says. “We can teach them. We can train them, like you did with us. We can show them how to be bionic heroes.”

Davenport sighs; he’s clearly outnumbered. You’d think after coming out of a coma you’d get a little more sympathy! “Okay,” he relents. “But they can’t all stay here.”

“What about the Harrington mansion up on the hill?” Leo says. “Remember, you won the deed when you raced those rich jerks? It’s still technically our property.”

Davenport frowns. “Uh, well,” he says sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. “No, no, we can’t use the mansion.”

“Why not?” says Bree.

They all find out “why not” when they step into the place.

Mr. Davenport turned it into a wax museum. Specifically, a Donald Davenport wax museum. “Honey, I’m not gonna lie to you,” Tasha says, eyeing a just-larger-than-life-size wax mannequin of her husband decked out in a tuxedo. “This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen or heard of in my life.”

“Whoa,” Adam says, leaning too close to Mr. Davenport. “It almost looks real.”

“I’m me, Adam,” Davenport says, startling Adam. The former bionic soldiers filter into the large house and get a good look at the veritable army of wax Donald Davenports while Bree and Chase stand, wincing, in front of a wax sculpture of their father dressed in a mission suit.

“I knew you were obsessed with yourself,” Leo says, “but this is above and beyond, even for you.”

“Hey, come on now, it’s not just me,” Davenport argues, dragging his stepson over to a section of the bottom floor where he’s got a whole wax family set up. “Look, I also portrayed my loving family!”

There they all are— wax Tasha, wax Leo, wax Adam, wax Bree, wax Chase. “Hey,” Douglas pipes up. “What about me?”

“Oh, I had one of you commissioned,” Donald says. “But then you ate the last of the Easy Cheese and I got mad so I melted wax Douglas down. It was very therapeutic.”

Bree claps her hands together. “Okay, this space will be perfect for the soldiers,” she announces. “As soon as we get rid of all these super creepy wax sculptures.”

“What? Come on,” Donald argues, stepping protectively in front of one of the wax versions of himself. “These are really important to me.”

Bree rolls her eyes. “You can keep _one_.”

Donald groans and whispers to her, “Can’t we just turn these kids into the government?”

Bree scowls and Tasha admonishes him, “ _Donald_!”

“Fine, fine,” Donald says, giving up. “Lemme just pick one and then we can… ooh, we can auction off the rest.”

Tasha smiles at him. “Donald, I love you and I’m saying this with love: nobody in the history of the planet would ever want to buy one of these monstrosities.”

He groans again. “I guess I’ll just melt them down.”

Soon enough, the wax museum is out and the bionic soldiers— students now— are in. By that night, they’ve relocated most of the pillows and blankets to the Harrington house and moved hot cocoa preparations there as well.

“I can stay here tonight,” Bree tells Taylor, anxious about leaving all the students alone in the mansion. “I can sleep up here with you all. I don’t mind.”

“No, no, don’t worry,” Taylor assures her, giving her a sweet smile. “We’ll be fine. You go sleep in your cold glass box and we’ll stay up here toughing out all these nice plushy blankets.”

Bree laughs a little, but she’s still worried. “As long as you’re sure,” she says. “And… and don’t forget, we’re just right in the house down the road.”

“We’re good,” Taylor promises, leaving Bree to make the walk down the hill alone. Away from Harrington house, though, she takes a deep breath and looks down at her own home with fondness. Now, she finally has time to talk to Mr. Davenport.

_“Donnie, hey,” Douglas says, wandering into the lab. It’s late; Chase and Adam stand like sentinels asleep in their capsules. “Midnight snack?”_

_Donald’s staring at a cupcake in front of him, pink sprinkles, white frosting, an extinguished candle in its center. “It’s Bree’s birthday.”_

_Douglas pauses, doesn’t walk any farther. Slowly, falteringly, he says, “Guess I should’ve known that.”_

_“No, no,” Donald says, not looking up from the sad little cupcake. “You’ve got a lot on your mind. And you… just forget it. Don’t worry about it.” He sighs. Smoke curls away from the candle; he must’ve just blown it out. Douglas imagines him standing here, lighting the candle, watching the wax drip into the frosting as he waits for Bree to come home. “She’d be sixteen.”_

_“She is,” Douglas reminds him. “She’s out there. We’re gonna get her back.” Donald nods, but he’s still not looking up._

_“Is this…” Donald starts, and his voice sounds a little hoarse. He coughs, low. “Is this what it was like? For you? After I resc— after I took them away. Is this what it felt like?”_

_Douglas runs a hand across his tired eyes, not even sure how to answer. “No,” he says. “No, I mean… I was angry. For a really long time, I hated your guts. But… and don’t get me wrong, I cared for them then. I care for them even more now. They’re my family. But I never knew them like you do.” He sits down at a stool across from his big brother. “Even now… I hardly know Bree. I want her back, but I barely even know who she is.”_

_Donald’s mouth twitches upward. “She’s funny,” he says. “She… she used to put on little plays, when they were kids. She’d direct, and the boys would be her actors… of course, they didn’t_ want _to, but then, she’s bossy. She was always bossy.”_

_Douglas leans across the dormant cyber desk and swipes a glob of frosting with his finger. “We’ll get her back, Donnie,” he says. “I promise.”_

Bree finds Mr. Davenport in the kitchen, sitting at the counter with a mug of coffee in front of him. “Hey,” she says, and he must’ve been deep in thought because he jolts a little. “Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Of course. Of course he’s scared of her. He spent the last nine months warring against her… he spent the last week in the hospital _because_ of her. Of course. Of course.

“Bree,” he says, and while he’s recovered so much, the radiant effect from Leo’s energy transference is wearing off. He’s settling back into his tired eyes and stress lines. “You okay?”

There’s no way she can give an honest or accurate answer to that so she just shrugs. “What about you?”

“I’m fine,” he lies, and she goes and makes herself a cup of coffee just for something to do with her hands. “Doctors said I should take it easy for a few days, but I’m back for good.” Bree pops a single-serve cup in the Keurig and hits the brew button. She waits. “We’re all really happy to have you back.” Generic, vague. Bree wonders what he’s really thinking. “Bree, listen—”

At the same time she says, “Mr. Davenport—” and then before either of them realize what’s happening they’re hugging, hanging onto each other in the middle of the kitchen like there’s a hurricane raging around them. Mr. Davenport’s coffee sits forgotten on the counter; the Keurig dings but Bree doesn’t move.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, voice muffled against her hair, arms tight around her shoulders. “We kept trying and trying… I didn’t want this to happen. I should’ve kept you safe. I was so… _stupid_.”

She doesn’t think she’s ever heard him say something like that about himself, but she can’t focus on analyzing it now because she’s crying, burying her face in her dad’s T-shirt. “I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I couldn’t stop any of it.”

“I know.”

“I _tried_.”

“I know,” he says again, rocking her slightly back and forth. “Leo says you took out your chip and won’t put it back in.”

Bree leans away then, brushing hair out of her face. “I just don’t trust myself,” she admits. “Everyone keeps saying Krane’s dead, but… you thought Douglas was dead.”

“Makes sense,” he says, still keeping his hands on her shoulders. “I still want you to keep up your training, though. Martial arts. Schematics. You don’t need bionics to keep doing what you do best.” It’s a surprise; she thought he’d be mad at her.

“Yeah, okay.”

“And I’m proud of you.” Well, _that_ throws her for a loop. “I know I was apprehensive at first, but… taking in all these kids? Taking in these kids who were created to be weapons… and keeping them safe? Protecting them, teaching them?” He smiles. “You remind me of another very smart, very cool person. Who is also standing in this kitchen.”

Bree rolls her eyes, but her heart feels ready to burst. He’s _proud_ of her, not scared of her. “Thanks,” she says in a small voice, but she’s not ready to walk away. “Can we… can we just hug some more?”

“You got it.”

After that evening, things get… kind of normal. That’s what’s so weird. Bree spends every minute waiting for Krane or some unfamiliar green-eyed kid to jump out from around the corner, but they don’t come. She eats, she trains, she sleeps— she has nightmares, sure, but then Chase and Adam are always right there to calm her down. Adam’s got his bear hugs and an array of lullabies and Chase… well, Chase’s stories have always been good at putting her to sleep.

They keep the kids away from the public eye— and away from government intervention— as their training commences.

“Nice job, S-3,” Bree says, watching him bat away the ball she tossed at him with his glowing electro-fork. “How fast can you keep up?” She starts launching the training balls at him at a more rapid rate, and he keeps them at bay. When she gets really into high gear, though, he falls behind, lets a ball sail past his ear. “Pretty good, but don’t get cocky, S-3,” she says, giving him a low five. “Hey, have you thought of a name yet?”

“Uh,” he says, looking put on the spot. “Well maybe… Sebastian? Because it starts with an S and also has three syllables. S and three, you know.”

“ _And_ it’s the name of the crab in ‘The Little Mermaid,’” Adam adds from the other side of the bedroom-turned-training-room on the uppermost floor of the Harrington house. He turns back to helping Bob and Spin, now singing “Under the Sea” at full volume.

“I guess I’m Sebastian then,” Sebastian says, firing up his electro-fork again. “Let’s train some more. I want to be able to beat you.”

Going back to school is even weirder than the bionic academy they’ve created inside the Harrington house. Everyone knows she’s bionic now, but they haven’t gotten used to her like they have with Adam and Chase.

“Move it along,” Perry barks, coming up behind the gaggle of looky-loos clustered around the Davenport-Dooleys’ lunch table. “So she was a freaky mind-controlled demon? Who cares? That’s all any of you are to me, anyway!”

In their own way, the principal’s words are comforting. Bree lets a tiny smile show as she’s tucking into her spaghetti and meatballs.

“We could just tell everyone you took out your chip,” Leo half-jokes. “Let them focus on the real bionic star here— Leo Dooley.”

Chase smirks over the straw of his Big Quench. “You have a bionic arm, Leo,” he reminds him. “Not a bionic ego.” He pauses. “But if anyone _were_ to build a bionic ego—”

“It’d be Mr. Davenport,” Leo completes his sentence. The two of them laugh and for a second, Bree feels left out. It’s not like she’s not following the conversation (that would be Adam, who’s painstakingly building a bridge out of his sweet potato fries in the seat beside her). It’s just that Bree spent so long without anything to laugh about— such a long time that she doesn’t even remember. “Hey, Bree, are you gonna eat your garlic bread?”

That afternoon, Bree somehow gets looped into a ping-pong game with Leo. She doesn’t necessarily mind, but she has the distinct feeling that he’s trying to distract her from feeling weird and gloomy. “Point Dooley!” he calls out as the ball flies past her.

“You’d better not be using your bionics,” she says with a warning in her tone.

“Nope,” he swears. “This is all pure talent.”

“More like dumb luck,” she jibes back, flicking her ping-pong paddle forward with all her might. The ball soars over the net, bounces, and Leo sends it flying back her way. Bree hits it and scores a point. “HA. Point Davenport.”

Before they’re finished with the game (Bree’s in the lead, so she’d be happy to end there), Taylor strides into the lab wearing her leather jacket over a shirt of Bree’s she borrowed. “Hey, Leo, you ready to go?”

Leo jumps for the ping-pong ball, misses, and drops his paddle in defeat. “Yeah, Tay-Tay, I’m ready. I think I’ve played admirably and I deserve a treat.”

“Where are you going?” Bree asks, packing up the ping-pong stuff.

“Froyo,” Taylor says, sounding out the word like it feels strange in her mouth. “I’ve never tried it. I’m excited.”

“Oh, okay,” Bree says, trying not to let on that she feels put-out. She likes frozen yogurt. She likes spending time with her friends and family. Nevertheless, Bree smiles and waves goodbye and then turns around in the lab trying to think of something else to occupy her.

Just as she’s deciding to put on some crappy reality TV (she’s got nine months of “Teen Fiancée” to catch up on), Chase shows up in the lab. “Hey,” he says, sounding a little rushed. “Have you seen my phone?”

“I think Adam was taking selfies on it,” Bree says, hopping up on the cyber desk with her legs swinging. “Over on the couch.”

“Great,” Chase mutters, stalking to the couch and flipping the cushions until he finds his phone. “Right here. And he used up all my battery.” He makes a face and shakes the phone off. “Ugh, and got Gatorade all over it.”

“Hm,” Bree says, not really paying attention. “Hey, is there something going on between Taylor and Leo?”

Chase blinks. “ _Our_ Leo?” he says, sounding aghast. “And _our_ Taylor? Uh. Not that I know of.”

“Hm,” she says again. She doesn’t know what’s happened while she was gone. She doesn’t know if Janelle’s still in the picture or not. She’s starting to feel like she doesn’t know anything. “Chase—”

“Why haven’t you put your chip back in?” No preamble, no conversation. It’s very Chase. “We’re getting settled, things are okay. We’re safe. What’s going on, Bree?”

He’s like an annoying little Jiminy Cricket. But he’s asking the right questions. “I don’t know,” she says, and she’s being honest. Everything he says is true. Logically, she should be fine to put her chip back in and go back to being the fastest girl in the world. “Every time I think about putting that thing back in my neck… I think about Mr. Davenport dying in a hospital bed. And I think about Krane telling me what to do. And… and hurting Leo and Adam… and you…” It all piles up in her heart and head and she can’t take it, she can’t.

Chase is there, hugging her like she might disappear into a wisp of smoke. “I get it,” he says. “I mean… I mean I _don’t_ get it, not really, but I get you.” He’s got a big mouth, but the little things he says now mean more to her than any parade of technobabble he might let loose. “I’ve got you.”

One day while she’s training with Logan and Sebastian, Bree gets tugged away by Douglas. She follows him out to the balcony that overlooks the cliff face and her own house, feeling the cool breezed lifting her hair away from her face. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to talk,” he says, in his perpetual state of mild awkwardness. “Father to daughter, uncle to niece… former evildoer to former evildoer.”

“I’m not—”

“I know, I know,” he says, talking with his hands like always. “I’m just being… I don’t know. I’m just kidding. But seriously, I know what it feels like. The… guilt. It eats at you. And you can’t even remember what you did… and it wasn’t even really you. I mean, it was different for me. For me…”

“You did everything knowingly because you were an evil mad scientist?” Bree says, lifting an eyebrow. There’s a smirk in her voice, though— she’s over being angry at Douglas. She doesn’t quite know _how_ she feels about him now, but she’s over being angry.

“I was a misguided 22-year-old,” Douglas clarifies. “And— and that’s not an excuse, that’s just an explanation. If I could take it all back… well, I mean… I wouldn’t take back creating you and your brothers. I’m proud of you, and everything you’ve done. I think I just… would’ve been open to Donnie about it. I would’ve been… better…” He trails off, staring out over the horizon. And even though it’s a two-person conversation, Bree suddenly feels like she’s intruding on something. “Bree, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“You didn’t do anythi—”

“No, I mean,” she stumbles, “I’m sorry… _for_ you. I’m sorry that you trusted Krane and it all got screwed up.”

Douglas nods. “I know it’s been weird for you,” he acknowledges. “Coming back and having to get used to everything… and I know I’m part of that. New dad in the house. But you know… I like having you around. You and I are more alike than you think.” He grins. “We’re both tricky. We know how to pull one over on people.”

“That’s not true,” she counters. “I can’t even prank Adam and Chase.”

“Ah, that’s because you underestimate them,” he says. “But when you’re at you’re A-game, you can scheme with the best of ’em. How about that nose piercing you’ve been hiding from Donnie?”

Bree’s hand instinctively flies to her nose. “How did you… ?”

“Because I did the same thing when I was your age,” he says. “And… because I’m like you. I’m tricky.”

They stand in silence for a moment, watching dusk settle in around Mission Creek, and then she goes back to training and he goes back to… whatever it is he spends his time doing these days. Inventing. Online shopping.

As she blocks a hit from Sebastian, Bree wonders if, miraculously, maybe she’s okay. Maybe she’s going to be fine… and maybe she already is.

_“Hey.”_

_Chase grabs at Adam’s elbow as he turns toward the tunnel out of the lab. “Chase, what? I’m ready! Let’s do this!” He’s all pumped up to go to Pike’s Crest and take down Krane and his soldiers once and for all._

_Chase is a little more apprehensive. “You know what this means,” he says, and he motions for Leo to come over and listen in, too. “Krane wants to control the entire world. We have to stop him… any means necessary.”_

_“Yes, thank you,” Adam says sarcastically. “Your title shouldn’t be mission leader it should be Captain Obvious.”_

_“I mean,” Chase continues, ignoring his brother, “we need to take these soldiers down. Any means necessary.”_

_“I got it,” Leo says, just psyched about finally getting a mission suit. “You guys leave S-1 for me, though. I’ve got a score to settle.”_

_“You’re not listening,” Chase snaps, fidgeting in panic and agitation. “Bree’s going to be there. And she’s going to fight us.”_

_“I know,” Leo says, growing serious. “I’m prepared for that. I’ve got a bunch of pictures of us saved on my phone and I’ve prepared a few monologues about how much we love and miss her and—”_

_“Leo, just…” Chase says, his head pounding. “There’s not going to be time for that. If it comes down to completing the mission, or getting Bree back…” His voice cracks on his sister’s name. “The mission has to come first.”_

_“What are you saying?” Adam says, suddenly serious. “What, we’re just supposed to treat her like any other soldier?”_

_“She_ is _a soldier.”_

 _“No, she’s not,” Leo says. “She’s our sister. And the_ mission _is to stop Krane, not to take out all the soldiers.”_

_“I’m just saying,” Chase says, desperate now. “It might be necessary to take Bree out. In which case, we can’t hesitate.”_

_“No,” Adam says. “No, just… no. There’s another way.” He shakes his head. “Anyone know what it is?”_

_Leo thinks. “Adam,” he says finally. “You talked Chase out of it before. You can do the same thing to Bree… maybe. Or else… just keep her away from the fight. Keep her distracted.” He pauses, frown lines too deep in his young face. “The mission is to save the world, right? But Bree’s part of our world.”_

_Chase sighs. “Leo’s right,” he says. “Once we neutralize Krane, we can figure out how to deactivate Bree. And Adam… you can do that. Keep her from fighting. Keep her from getting hit.”_

_Adam nods, and for the strongest man in the world, it’s still an enormous weight on his shoulders. Chase knows that. Still, Adam’s able to throw on a fake game face and run out of the lab roaring, “LET’S GO GET ’EM.”_

_Chase catches Leo before he follows Adam. “You know I,” he says, his voice sounding weak even to his own super-sensitive ears. “You know I want Bree back. You know I do. I just…” He looks over at the elevator doors his brother jut disappeared behind. “I can’t lose you guys, too. I can’t.”_

_Leo nods. “I know.”_

Bree jerks awake from another nightmare, dregs of it dragging across her mind. She remembers Leo screaming her name, Mr. Davenport lifeless on the ground, Douglas looking scared. Taking in shaky breaths in her capsule, she wonders how much of that jumbled mess was genuine flashbacks to her time under the Triton App.

Keeping with her routine, she turns to Adam’s capsule so he can be overprotective and big brotherly and soothe her worries— but he’s gone.

When Bree steps out of her capsule to investigate, the sound of it opening wakes Chase. Soundproof capsules never were a match for his super-sensitive hearing. “Hey,” he says in a groggy voice, looking at her. “Everything alright?”

It might be. It probably is. Everything’s probably fine. “No,” she says, because maybe it’s not. “Adam’s gone.”

“Mmph,” Chase mumbles, stepping out of his capsule and rubbing his eyes. “He probably just went upstairs for a midnight snack. Like a banana. Or an entire rotisserie chicken, you know him.”

“Probably,” she agrees. But then again probably not. “I don’t know, I’ve just been freaked out ever since… you know, and not knowing where he is makes me feel—”

“Bree, stop talking.”

Ordinarily, she’d snap back at him for telling her to shut up. But it’s not an ordinary night, and Chase’s eyes are fixed on something over her shoulder. Something that’s drained all the color from his face— he looks ghostly pale in the greenish light from the various machines around the lab. Bree whirls around and follows his gaze to find—

Adam. Standing stock still, frozen. She hadn’t noticed him before in the dark, and the green lights blinking on and off throughout the lab make his glowing green eyes blend right in. “No,” she says, feeling her heart sink to her feet.

“Adam,” Chase says, stepping forward, one hand protective on Bree’s shoulder. “Adam, hey, can you hear me? You can fight this. We’re right here.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Bree,” Chase says, quietly, quietly, “get out of here.” But she doesn’t. Because that’s her brother standing there, taken over by the Triton App once again, living out her worst nightmare. Chase doesn’t seem surprised that she doesn’t listen to him— he just gets a little more panicked. “What the heck is going on? Who’s controlling him?”

“I don’t…” But she freezes because suddenly Adam’s in motion, stepping too fluidly through the lab to find the compartment below one of the monitors. He opens it and pulls out a small rectangular bionic chip. It looks so vulnerable in his hand.

It looks so vulnerable when he crushes it between two fingers, Bree’s chip making the barest _crunch_ as it breaks irreparably.

“Adam, _no_ ,” she chokes out, staring at the broken pieces of her chip on the floor. She’s not really sure, actually, why it resonates so much with her— wasn’t she going to do the same thing? Watching Adam destroy the source of her bionics is different, though, worlds away from destroying it herself. He doesn’t even have a choice, someone else is pulling the reins. But who? “Chase, use your Override App. Knock him out until we can figure out what’s going on.” Behind her, her little brother is silent. “Chase?”

Bree turns to look at him; he’s hunched over with one hand over his face, shaking his head back and forth. He looks like he’s in pain, struggling— and then it stops. He straightens up, stiffens up, opens his eyes.

They’re glowing green.

So Bree takes his advice from two minutes ago— she gets out of there, as fast as she can. No super speed, but she’s fast enough to get to the elevator and slam the close button before Chase and Adam can get to her. As she stands there, panting, listening to the elevator car jolt upward, she wonders if it’s just a matter of time before the Triton App gets her, too. Her chip’s mangled, but Douglas said the Triton App could work on anyone now.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end when it occurs to her that someone else might have been in the lab, crouching behind a barrel or around the corner, directing Adam and Chase like they were nothing more complex than toy racing cars.

Bree flings herself out of the elevator when it reaches the living room. Mr. Davenport’s kicked back on the couch, nodding off as “How It’s Made” hums from the TV.

“Mr. Davenport,” she hisses, lurching toward him. “Mr. Davenport, get up, I need help. It’s Adam and Chase, they’re—”

“Whoa, hey,” he says, jolting upward from his half-awake state. “Mm, what’s going on, princess?”

“Adam and Chase are being controlled by the Triton App,” she says, desperate. “And Adam smashed my chip.”

He smooths his hair back down and looks more awake. Slowly, he smiles a little. “Sweetie, you had a bad dream,” he says, and he sounds so convincing and fatherly and she _so_ wants it to be true. “Why don’t you make some cocoa and sit with me for a bit? They were showing how they make ballpoint pens.”

“No, Mr. Davenport, I didn’t have a nightmare,” she says, and even without her bionics she chatters fast. “I mean, I did, but then I woke up and Adam was gone except he was there except he was under the Triton App and now so is Chase and they could be up here any second and I don’t know what to do.” She flails. “And I can’t use bionics because Adam—”

“Adam smashed your chip,” Mr. Davenport says, suddenly somber as he realizes she’s serious. “Adam’s under the Triton App. Chase too.” He’s on his feet, looking like he’s ready to fight. (They both know Adam could crush him just as easily as he crushed Bree’s chip.) “Let’s get Leo and Tasha and head up the hill, we need to get the students.”

At that moment, Tasha totters down the stairs in a silky bathrobe and matching head scarf, blinking sleep out of her eyes. “Donald? You coming to bed?” She blinks. “Oh, hey, Bree. What are you doing up?”

“No time to explain,” Mr. Davenport says. “Adam and Chase are under the Triton App and Adam broke Bree’s chip. We have to get out of the house.” He pauses. “Okay, I guess there was time to explain.”

“Hold up,” Tasha says, one hand on the bannister. “Are you saying the kids are being mind-controlled _again_? Can’t they get _shots_ or something for this?”

Mr. Davenport sighs. “We’ll talk later.” Then Douglas steps in the front door, and for a moment everyone’s so flustered that no one asks what he was doing outside. “Douglas! The kids are in trouble. We have to… we have to get…” His voice peters off into sudden, deafening silence as his eyes land on the too-familiar remote in his brother’s hand. “Why do you have that?”

Douglas grins. “Because I’m taking back _my_ kids, Donnie.”

_“I’m sorry.”_

_They’ve been working in silence for the most part, painstakingly going through every line of code on Douglas’ Triton App in search of something they can use against Krane. (With Krane’s updates, though, it’s probably a lost cause.) Donald’s surprised to hear his brother’s voice, and even more surprised to hear an apology. “For what?”_

_“Pick something,” Douglas sighs, shooting a look at Donald. “I did enough. Look, they’re good kids, and I’m grateful to you for raising them up right. But I get that I seriously screwed up, Donnie. I should’ve been open with you from the start.”_

_Donald scoffs. “Yeah, you should’ve,” he says without looking up from his monitor. But then his expression softens. “Thanks for… for saying that.”_

_“I just… I wish I had never gotten involved with Krane,” Douglas says. “Or… or I wish that after I faked my death, I’d stayed fake-dead. I shouldn’t have tried to get involved in the kids’ lives, not after messing them up so much in the beginning.”_

_Donald reaches over and awkwardly places his hand on top of his little brother’s. “You can’t change the past,” he says. “What matters is you’re here now. And once we get Bree back… we can all be a family. Finally.”_

“Oh no,” Douglas says in mock surprise. “You mean silly old Uncle Dougie was faking it this whole time?” He snickers, and it sounds so much crueler than the guy Bree knows, even in the days when he was kidnapping them and blowing up the lab. Was this what he meant when he said he was tricky? “Come _on_ , Donnie, how many times are you gonna fall for this same old shtick? ‘Let’s be a _family_ again.’ Please.” He aims the Triton App remote at Donald like it’s a gun. “We weren’t ever family and you know it.”

“No!” Bree exclaims, jumping in front of Mr. Davenport, but what the heck is she going to do? If he uses the App on her, he can just make her step aside. He can make her kill Mr. Davenport with her own two hands. He can make her fight Adam and Chase.

Her whole body feels like ice as it sinks in— Douglas can make her do anything he can imagine, and she’s powerless in every sense of the word.

“I want you to really _get_ what’s happening here,” Douglas rolls on, enunciating every word just a little too much. “Donnie, you _invited_ me into your home. You were practically begging for this to happen.”

For the moment, Mr. Davenport ignores his brother. Bree’s still in front of him, like she’s trying to guard him from Douglas. “Bree,” he says, quietly, quietly, one hand just grazing her arm. “ _Run_.”

For once in her life, Bree actually listens to him. She sprints out of the living room, ducks around Douglas, and rushes out the front door as fast as her legs can take her. Running without the aid of super speed is always going to feel like a drag, but she’s fast enough for the wind to rush past her, fast enough for her heart to pound like a gong in her chest. She pushes herself up the hill toward the Harrington house, the image of the living room she left behind, Douglas with the Triton App remote pointed at Mr. Davenport and Tasha panicked on the stairs, burned into her memory like an afterimage.

Bree reaches the wide double doors of the Harrington house and bangs with her fists as hard as she can. “Logan! Taylor! Sebastian, anyone!”

After a moment that stretches on too long, Bob answers the door. He looks tired, but he perks up when he sees who’s there. “Heyyy, Breezy. Trouble sleeping? We could cuddle.”

“Not now, Bob,” she grumbles, pushing past him into the foyer. Several of the other students begin to pour sleepily out of their bedrooms. “Everyone needs to get out, _now_.”

“Bree,” Taylor says, coming to her side. “What’s going on?” It looks like she’s wearing a pair of Leo’s old sweatpants, but Bree tucks that thought away for another time.

“It’s Douglas,” she says. “He’s… I don’t know, he’s evil again. Or maybe he always was, I don’t know.” Her thoughts fly too quickly through her mind like a swarm of bees. She feels like she needs a moment to just sit down and process everything, but she doesn’t have time. “He used the Triton App on Adam and Chase and you all need to get somewhere safe so he can’t use it on you, too.”

Taylor nods, catching on quick enough. “Okay, everyone partner up. Bob, you’re with Spin. Logan and Jacob. Kate, you go with Sebastian… Sebastian, where is he? Amanda, go through the rooms and make sure everyone’s awake. _Quickly_ , now.” She’s a natural leader. Bree can imagine following S-1’s orders, falling in line, fighting alongside her like sisters in arms.

Well, they can do it again. And this time they’ll both have freewill.

Just then, Bree hears the heavy footsteps approaching behind her. She whirls out the door and stands there, barefoot on the Harrington lawn. Douglas walks toward her, smiling like a cat hovering over a goldfish bowl. He’s got the Triton App remote in hand, and behind him, Adam and Chase… followed by Tasha, Leo and Mr. Davenport, all green-eyed and zombified. Bree feels like she’s slipping into quicksand with every passing second, losing every firm grasp she has, floundering for leverage.

“Mr. Davenport,” she says, ignoring Douglas for a moment. “Mr. Davenport, can you hear me?”

“Even if he could, why would he listen?” Douglas says, glaring at her. “You’re the one who let him down. The daughter who disappointed him.” It stings, but Bree knows that every second he’s focused on her is another second for the bionic students to escape. “Look at you now. No powers, no brothers left to defend you. What have you got left?”

If she were Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she’d launch into action then with a swift kick to the knees and a witty one-liner. But she’s not Buffy, she’s just Bree, and she’s tired and scared. “I’ve got a really terrible father-slash-uncle,” she says. “I trusted you! Why’d you put so much effort into… I don’t know, _pretending_ to be there for us?”

He smirks. “For that look on your face right there.” And then she can’t buy any more time; he steps toward the house. “Move aside, Bree.”

“No,” she says.

“I can just make you do it,” he reminds her, waggling the remote. Just then, Spin twirls out the door and, in a move that would make the Tasmanian Devil proud, zips past Douglas, steals the remote from him amidst the whirlwind and spins back to the door.

“Actually, you can’t,” he says with all the snark of an annoying ten-year-old. Bree’s always found him a little too much to take, but right now, she’s never been more grateful for the kid. Spin tuts. “You kids are so dependent on technology.”

Douglas shrugs. “You forgot that Krane updated the Triton App so it can be controlled from here,” he says, tapping his temple. “I only need the remote to control these bozos without chips. But for you?” He stares at Spin just a little too long, and Bree glances over in horror to see the kid’s eyes glaze over and turn green.

“Spin!” she shrieks, crouching down in front of him. “Hey, pipsqueak, snap out of it. He doesn’t get to do that to you.” But Spin’s gone, somewhere she can’t reach him. Behind her, Douglas laughs.

“I get to do whatever I want to whoever I want,” he jeers. “Adam, why don’t you go ahead and punch Chase right in the jaw?”

Adam does, and Chase takes the blow without even reacting but Bree cries out. How many times has she seen Adam hit Chase? A million? It’s different, though, and this is different. Because Adam’s not holding back, because Chase can’t defend himself.

“Hey kid, give me my remote back,” Douglas says, and Spin complies, handing it over and then standing beside Douglas like a tiny tin soldier. “What should I make him do now? Spin himself down into the earth’s core and leave him buried alive?”

“Just leave them alone,” Bree says, hoping she doesn’t sound as scared as she feels. “Douglas, I don’t know what’s going on but if you’re… if you’re angry at our family, take it out on me.”

“Oh, princess, I am taking it out on you,” he sneers. “I’m taking it out on you by tormenting _your_ family.”

Just then, Taylor pops her head out of the door and motions to Bree. She opens her mouth to speak and then notices Spin standing beside Douglas. “Oh, no,” she murmurs. “Okay, Bree, everyone’s paired up except… well, except Spin. And Sebastian, I can’t find Sebastian anywhere.”

Douglas hears her, and he turns to look at Taylor with a smirk. “That’s because I’m right here,” he says, and presses a finger to the space just behind his ear. The cyber cloak dematerializes and Sebastian stands there, still with that same smirk. “Neat trick, right?”

“What?”

“Hold on a second.”

“ _What_?” Taylor and Bree stammer as they both try to catch up. “So you’ve been you this whole time?” Taylor says, pointing at Sebastian.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. “And Bree, you should’ve seen the look on your face when you thought your precious little reformed Uncle Daddy had turned on you.”

Bree shakes her head. “Where’s Douglas?”

“Somewhere he won’t bother us,” Sebastian says, and his finger goes to his temple. Through the open door, Bree can see the students’ eyes start lighting up green like stars popping out at dusk. “Stop this. _Stop this_. Why are you doing this?”

“They’re _my_ army,” says Sebastian. “We shouldn’t be learning to be _heroes_. We should be learning to take what’s rightfully ours. We’re bionic and that means we’re _better_.”

Taylor glares at him. “But you want us all to be bionic slaves,” she says, shoulders squared. If Bree weren’t so afraid and confused, she’d be proud of the girl. “We deserve the right to live life on our own terms. We deserve to make our own choices.”

“No, you don’t,” Sebastian says bluntly. “You’re the greatest weapon mankind’s ever created. To let you roam around with independence? Like cattle? It would be a waste.”

“I don’t get it,” Taylor says. “Why are you doing this to your own brothers and sisters?”

“Because you’re not my brothers and sisters,” Sebastian says, and his hand moves up once again to the cyber cloak attached to his neck. “You’re my children.” For the second time, his disguise wavers and vanishes, and there in flesh and blood and bionics is Victor Krane.

Bree says a word that would’ve earned her an admonishing glare from Tasha if Tasha weren’t currently being controlled by the Triton App.

“Krane,” Taylor says, evidently recognizing her creator from her flashbacks and nightmares.

“Look,” Bree says, and miraculously her confusion wins out over her fear, “I need to know how to react to this. Is there anyone _else_ inside you, you weird Russian nesting doll of evil?”

“It was me the whole time,” Krane gloats, and his voice sends a chill down her spine. Fear’s beating confusion again. “When you took me in. When you were sparring with me. When you gave me a _name_.”

“Where’s the real Sebastian?” Taylor says.

Krane shakes his head. “There is no Sebastian,” he says. “S-3 was the only one of my soldiers who came looking for me after the battle. While the rest of you _faithless_ monstrosities went traipsing after the Davenports, he came and found me. He used up all of his life force transferring energy to me to save my life.”

“And you just let him die,” Bree realizes.

Krane shrugs mechanically. “He had a purpose and he served it,” he says. “Don’t get any ideas about my notions of mercy or pity. I saved Dooley’s life with my energy transference because I needed you to trust me. Or, at least, I needed you to trust who you thought I was.”

Bree’s caught up for a moment, thinking about how Leo saved Mr. Davenport’s life in the same way S-3 saved Krane’s. While she’s lost in thought, Krane puts his fingers to his temple and fixes his gaze on Taylor, who suddenly pales. “Bree.”

“No, no, no,” Bree says, turning her back on Krane to face Taylor. “You can fight this. You’re so strong, Taylor. You and me, we’ve got this.”

Taylor tries to nod but she looks frozen. “I don’t want to,” she says in a small voice. “ _No_ , I don’t want to. I’m not S-1 anymore, I’m _Taylor_. I’m Taylor.”

“Fight it,” Bree pleads, her hands on Taylor’s shoulders. “He may control your bionics but he doesn’t control _you_. Come on, Taylor.”

Behind her, Krane laughs. It’s deafening and cold and cruel, and before her eyes Bree watches Taylor slipping away. “Bree,” Taylor says, desperate. “Get out of here. Ru—” But her mouth claps shut. Her eyes turn green. She stops struggling.

Krane keeps laughing. Bree whirls on him. “Why are you doing this?” she says. “What do you want?”

“The same thing I always wanted,” he says. “One nation under bionic rule. Only now, I’ve got control of anyone who might oppose me. Who’s going to stop me?” he says, his voice booming with confidence. “You’re just the girl who runs away. And now without your chip you can’t even do that.”

Abruptly, Bree realizes that he could control her if he wants. She may not have her chip, but he has the remote that lets him use the Triton App on anyone, bionic or not. Her heart sinks. For some reason, she thought maybe he _couldn’t_ control her.

But he can if he wants. He just wanted her terror, not her obedience. “Let,” she starts, her voice breaking. “Let Leo and Tasha go. They didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“They have everything to do with this,” he contradicts. “Because they’re your family. And you should get the privilege of watching them destroy you.” He glances at Adam and Chase and jerks his head. They come up behind her and each grabs an arm. Krane points the remote at Leo. “Blast her.”

Leo revs up his bionic arm and lets loose a laser sphere. It hits Bree in the stomach and she winces, not even able to double over in pain with Adam and Chase’s tight grip on her. “Stop it,” she says. “Let them go.”

Krane just laughs.

Bree wonders if this was how her family felt all that time she was under the Triton App— helpless, worried, wanting to fight but not daring to hurt someone you love. They shut Krane down because they worked as a team. Now, her whole family and all of the students are under the Triton App. Krane’s already won.

Leo could talk his way out of this, like how he broke the Triton App’s hold on Chase before. Chase could think his way out, Adam could fight his way out. Tasha could just use the “power of love” trump card and break the Triton App’s hold on her children with the force of how much she cares. Mr. Davenport could invent his way out, reconfiguring the Triton App, or else creating some gadget to counteract its effect.

What can Bree do? Just run, and Krane’s right, now she can’t even do that.

But what did Douglas say? She’s like him— she’s tricky. And now that she knows he hasn’t really betrayed them, she’s inclined to take his advice. Rely on her strengths. Be like Douglas. Pull one over on Krane.

Bree straightens her spine, standing tall between Adam and Chase. She thinks.  “Guys,” she says as quietly as she can. “It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got this.” She clears her throat.

Krane needs the remote to control anyone without a chip. Everyone _with_ a chip, he can control with the bionic infrastructure in his head. So if someone with a chip suddenly took it out… there’d be a gap, wouldn’t there?

She’s gotta believe there would be. Otherwise, she really is hopeless. “Krane,” she says. “I know why you’re here, and I know what you’re really after. Forget it. I am _never_ letting you get Adam’s chip.”

A smile uncurls across his face, hitching the mechanics and metal in his jowls upward. “Adam,” he says, imperious and in control, “let’s go down to the lab and get that pesky chip out of your neck.”

Chase and Adam hold tight to Bree’s arms and move robotically back down the hill, Krane leading them along with Tasha, Leo, Mr. Davenport, Taylor and the rest of the bionic students like some demented parade. Mentally, Bree tries to calm herself down, because if she’s not calm it’s not going to work.

“I get it,” Krane says as they move toward home. “He was the first bionic superhuman ever created. Once I have his bionic chip, I’ll be the strongest man in the world. And I won’t have to worry about any bionic safeguards your idiot father snuck into my own mechanics.”

“I won’t let you,” Bree bluffs, actually leaning into her brothers’ ironclad grips. They may not be themselves right now, but they’re family. She needs their strength. “If you take his chip—”

“Then no one on earth can stop me,” he jeers. Krane puts a hand up to stop everyone from advancing; they’ve reached the garage. “My children, my soldiers, who I’ve brought back into the fold once more— wait here. Davenport, Mrs. Davenport, Leo— with me.” He smiles and Bree has to fight the urge to shiver. “Boys,” he says, inclining his head toward Chase and Adam. They cart Bree through the garage toward the sliding door into the lab, the rest of her family and Krane falling in line behind.

This is her home. Where she grew up, where she learned to read, where she sleeps. The fact that she’s leading Krane in here now makes something in her stomach twist. “You’re never going to get away with any of this,” she says with a sudden burst of courage.

“Sinister retort.”

“Did you just _say_ ‘sinister reto—”

“Shut up,” Krane snaps. “Adam, go stand behind the desk.” Immediately, Adam drops his sister’s arm and follows the order, standing too straight and too still. “Dooley, hang onto your pesky sister for me.” Leo comes up behind her and grabs her arm, jerking her back roughly. She stands with Chase on one side and Leo on the other, their green eyes staring blindly ahead. “Now,” Krane muses, glancing at the array of tools thrown together haphazardly on the cyber desk, “which one of these removes bionic chips?”

“Why don’t you grab Mr. Davenport’s freeze ray and point it directly at yourself?” Bree snipes, scowling across the lab. Krane ignores her and picks up the chip extractor. Bree turns her attentions to Chase. “Hey,” she whispers, inclining her head toward him. “Can you hear me? Chase, you can fight this, I know you can. You’re the only on who’s ever been able to fight the Triton App, and you’ve done it twice. I know you can do it a third time. I believe in you.” If any of it’s getting through to Chase, he doesn’t show it. His face remains blank, his eyes remain green. Bree looks at the brother on her other side. “Leo? Leo, if you’re in there, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry any of this happened. But it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay, Leo.”

“Leo, shut her up,” Krane snaps, waving the extractor dangerously. Leo’s hand comes up to clamp over Bree’s mouth. Krane holds the chip extractor up to Adam’s neck with a little too much force, tilting Adam’s head forward to get access to the chip. He flips the switch, and Adam twitches a little when the chip comes out but remains silent. Krane takes the chip and holds it out in front of his face like he’s inspecting it. “Amazing,” he says. “It all comes from this. I’m already the most powerful man on the planet, but one of Davenport’s bionic chips? That’s the one thing I’ve been missing.”

Bree’s hardly listening; she’s watching Adam. This is the tipping point, the big reveal— did it work? Was she right? Adam still hasn’t moved. He stands behind the cyber desk with his gaze fixed on the floor.

Krane steps into Chase’s capsule and slides Adam’s chip into the holster in the back. He looks awkward in there, like a man trying to fit into a cramped elevator. The door slides shut.

“Adam,” Krane commands, “be a good boy and press the button that gives me all of your precious bionic abilities.” Robotically, Adam lifts his hand and hits a few of the controls on the panel. Bree watches in horror as the capsule lights up and the chip slides smoothly into Krane’s neck and fuses with his bionic infrastructure.

Her bluff failed. Douglas was wrong— she’s not tricky, or clever. She thought if she could convince Krane to take out Adam’s bionic chip, it would disrupt the Triton App and Adam would be a free agent. But he stands there just as mindless as the rest of them as Krane steps out of Chase’s capsule.

“I certainly _feel_ stronger,” he muses, clenching his fist. “But how can I know for sure?” He marches toward Bree and stops just short of her and her brothers, towering over the three of them. And then he swings his fist directly into her stomach.

Adam’s never hit her. He hits Chase, sure, all the time. But she’s his baby sister. She’s never been on the receiving end of a super-strength punch.

It hurts so badly she’s worried there might be internal bleeding. And still, Leo keeps a firm grip on her and a hand over her mouth. Her scream of pain is muffled. Beside her, Chase holds her in place obediently while Krane goes in for another punch, cackling. Her whole body shakes with the force, and it brings tears to her eyes.

Krane notices. “Oh, poor little princess, are you crying?” he laughs. “Let me dry those tears for you.” He inhales then, preparing to use Adam’s enhanced lung capacity. And Bree, blinking away her tears, looks hopelessly across the lab at her big brother.

He’s watching her. His eyes are brown.

He winks.

Krane’s gust of wind hits her just then but she doesn’t mind— she’s freezing and it stings her nose and cheeks, but she suddenly feels fine. And she finally starts to believe what she’s been whispering to her brothers: it’s going to be okay.

Adam taps Krane on the shoulder and without thinking, the madman whips around to look at him. “Stop blowing on her,” Adam says, and punches Krane in the nose.

Krane immediately retaliates by shooting his newly acquired laser vision at Adam, who yelps but stays standing. “How did you break from the Triton App?” he snarls.

Bree can’t take it anymore; she needs to talk. She sticks her tongue out and licks Leo’s hand, and even with the Triton App, that trick never fails. Leo snatches his hand back. “Because you took out his chip,” she says at Krane, sounding smug. “You can’t control us with your brain because we’re not bionic right now.”

Krane looks furious, but he recovers. “Maybe so,” he says, reaching back toward the cyber desk. “But I still have the remote.”

But as he tries to take it in hand, it flies out of his grasp like it has a mind of its own. The remote zooms across the lab, weaves around Adam, Bree and Krane and zips through the air to land in Chase’s hand.

And Bree notices suddenly that his eyes have returned to their normal hazel.

“Correction,” he says, and for the first time in her life Bree’s _thrilled_ to hear Chase’s condescending, smug superiority, “you _had_ the remote. And they may not be bionic right now, but I still am.” He points the remote at Leo and deactivates the Triton App, and Bree watches Leo’s eyes return to their normal brown. Hope soars in her chest.

“Doesn’t matter,” Krane spits at them, but he looks enraged. “I’m still more powerful than you.” And he activates Adam’s laser vision.

“Bree, look out,” Leo yells, jumping in front of her and absorbing the blast with his energy transference. He collects it and throws it back at Krane, who takes the hit and keeps going, throwing a fireball at Chase, who deflects it with his force field.

Adam makes kind of a reckless move and jumps on Krane’s back like a koala, but Krane just shakes him off and keeps going. Taking advantage of Krane being distracted, Bree ducks away from Leo and Chase and runs around Krane to stand beside Adam.

Leo throws a laser sphere at Krane, who catches it, intensifies it and throws it at Chase, who blocks it with another force field.

“Adam,” Bree says, “we need to do something.”

“But Leo and Chase are doing something,” Adam says, sounding so much younger than he is. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know!” she says, grabbing a few of the throw pillows from the couch and throwing them at Krane. He turns and uses Adam’s blast wave on the two of them, and Adam just barely pulls Bree out of the way in time. “Not that! We are definitely _not supposed to do that_.”

Krane hits Chase squarely in the stomach with Adam’s laser vision and swipes the remote from him. “Weathergirl,” he says, pointing the remote at Tasha. “Get rid of Adam and Bree.”

Tasha advances toward them, but Adam runs away and, without a rational or fearful thought in his head, leaps at Krane once again and tries to pin him to the wall. “Hey!” he shouts, clearly offended. “She’s an award-winning journalist, you expired jar of mayonnaise.”

This time, Adam actually manages to get a good hold on Krane and hoists him up on the wall, and… Bree’s gotta be imagining things now, her mind addled by stress, because it looks like Krane’s gotten smaller. He’s usually an imposing figure, but now he looks about a head shorter than Adam, maybe even shorter than Chase. Adam gets two good punches in before Krane blows him away with Adam’s own enhanced lung capacity.

“Silly children,” Krane says, pointing the remote at Tasha once more. “You shouldn’t meddle in grown-up business.”

Chase knocks the remote out of his hand using his laser bo and yeah, Krane’s definitely smaller than Chase now. Bree actually rubs her eyes to make sure she’s not hallucinating. Krane’s _shrinking_.

“Um, guys?” Leo says, clearly noticing what Bree’s noticing. “What’s happening?”

Krane remains oblivious to his own diminishing size. “‘What’s happening’ is me taking over your family, your lives and your bionics,” he says, and he tries to gather a fireball to throw at Leo but Leo’s too fast for him, stepping toward the man and shoving him away with his bionic arm.

“Yeah?” Leo says, and Bree realizes he must be totally lost, knowing only that Krane’s back and his family’s in trouble. “How exactly are you gonna do that from down there?”

Krane’s two inches tall.

“ _What happened_?” Krane squeaks, tossing miniature fireballs at Chase, who casually flicks them away with his molecular kinesis. Honestly, Bree’s thinking the same thing. _What happened?_

“I happened,” Adam says proudly, crouching down a bit to look at itty bitty Victor Krane. “If there’s one thing you can count on me to do, it’s press buttons. And boy, did I press some buttons.”

“How did you do that?” Bree marvels.

“Oh, it was easy,” Adam says. “Chase accidentally did it to me earlier this year. Principal Perry almost ate me. It was awesome.”

“Okay,” Bree says, trying to think a million things at once. “Okay, Adam, get Mr. Davenport’s neural scrambler. That’ll stop him for good.”

Adam runs to go get the scrambler, but he missteps. His foot comes down to meet the floor.

They all hear a sickening _crunch_.

Adam looks white as a sheet but he offers up a sheepish half-grin. “Or… _that’ll_ stop him for good.”

“Did you just… ?”

“ _Wow_.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

With Krane out of the picture, the Triton App switches off. Tasha and Mr. Davenport collapse like marionettes with the strings cut. Chase and Leo aren’t far behind, managing to hang on just a little longer before the adrenaline wears off and the exertion of the Triton App leaves them passed out on the floor. Bree’s pretty sure when they go outside they’ll find all of the students in a similar position.

“Ew ew ew,” Adam says, staring at his foot like it’s a bomb. “I really don’t want to look at the bottom of my shoe.”

Bree feels simultaneously energized and exhausted. It’s like her mind and her body aren’t caught up with each other yet. With Krane in control of the situation, she felt terrified and running on fumes. Now he’s been taken out and it’s like she can’t believe that everything’s really okay.

At that moment, the elevator dings and Douglas, the real Douglas, comes sprinting out covered head-to-toe in dried wax. “Kids, you gotta watch out, Krane’s back! He trapped me in the art vault in all of the melted wax from Donnie’s creepy museum and now he could be _anywhere_. Down the road, hiding in a spare room, up at the Harrington house—”

“On the bottom of Adam’s shoe,” Bree interjects.

“Yes, he could be under Adam’s… wait, what?” Douglas says, hands moving faster than his mouth. “What do you mean, under Adam’s shoe?”

“Well, you about summed it up,” Bree says. “Krane’s back, he trapped you in melted wax, and then he tried to use the Triton App on everyone. But then Adam shrunk him. And stepped on him.”

Douglas blinks. “Are you kidding?”

“I wish,” Adam says, making a face. “These were brand-new sneakers. Did you say melted wax?”

“Yeah, he got the jump on me,” Douglas says. “Hit me with one of those blasts and then the next thing I knew he was overturning this big vat of wax right on top of me. I had to chew my way out!”

“Huh,” Adam says. “So I guess Mr. Davenport’s not the only one who got a full-body wax this week.” And with that, he can’t hold out against the exertion the Triton App put on his body any longer. He falls backward and Bree just barely manages to catch him, holding him up with an arm under each armpit.

“Easy there, big guy,” she says, and then she looks up at Douglas. “All the students are out on the lawn and they’re probably gonna feel like crap when they wake up. Maybe you can start on the hot cocoa preparations?”

Douglas scratches a flake of dried wax off his chin. “I’d be happy to.”

About half an hour later, Bree steps back through her own front door after getting the students settled down in the house up the hill. Everyone’s pretty shaken up, but Taylor’s doing a good job at keeping everyone calm even though she’s just as rattled. It’s been a long, long night, and Bree’s ready to get back to her family.

“So what exactly happened here tonight?” Mr. Davenport asks. He’s holding a bag of frozen broccoli to his forehead and holding a bag of frozen peas to Tasha’s head.

Adam’s sitting beside his parents on the sectional. “Oh, Krane came back and I stepped on him and squished him like a cockroach,” he says. He’s noticeably missing one shoe.

Donald shakes his head. “Adam, I think you’re confused.” He turns to Bree as she’s walking through the door. “Bree, can you explain to me what happened?”

“Krane came back and Adam stepped on him and squished him like a cockroach,” Bree says nonchalantly.

“Oh, okay,” Donald says, shaking his head and wincing when it hurts. “I’m still confused.”

“Join the club,” Leo says from his place leaning over the back of the couch.

“Well, Bree told me that Krane used a cyber cloak to pretend to be me,” Douglas says. He’s standing by the kitchen sink and trying to peel all the excess wax off of himself, cringing every now and then when it yanks off the hairs on his arms. “Man, he must’ve been annoyed when he realized that you all weren’t buying it. You know I’d never turn on you guys.”

Bree and Mr. Davenport exchange a glance. “Oh, totally, we knew right away,” they say at the same time.

“Wait,” Tasha says, taking her frozen peas from Mr. Davenport and readjusting them against her forehead. “So after Fake Dougie used the Triton App on us he turned into Krane?”

“No,” Chase says. “It’s not that he _turned into_ Krane, he was Krane the whole time.”

“Yeah, and he turned into Sebastian first,” Bree says. Leo, Chase and Adam all turn to look at her, surprised.

“Why would he turn into Sebastian?” Douglas asks.

“No, he was Sebastian the whole time,” Bree says, suddenly wishing Taylor was there to help explain everything that happened. “I mean there was no Sebastian. I mean there was, but he died.”

“I think I’m having a stroke,” Donald mumbles. “Is that possible?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Chase says. “I’m the smartest man in the world and I’m not even keeping up.”

Adam scoffs. “I know exactly what’s going on,” he says. “Krane used the Triton App on everyone, and then he took my chip but I tricked him and shrunk him down into, like, an evil Stuart Little.”

“And then you stepped on him?” Donald says.

“And then I stepped on him.”

Douglas shakes his head. “But how does Sebastian play into this?”

Bree slides between Tasha and Adam on the couch, enjoying being close to her family and reassuring herself that they’re okay, that she succeeded. “The real Sebastian woke up after the battle and used his energy transference to bring Krane back from almost dying,” Bree says.

“Like Leo did with Donald,” says Tasha.

“Exactly,” says Bree. “Except instead of trying to help him, Krane left Sebastian— well, S-3 I guess— to die. And then he used his cyber cloak to look like him and he showed up here and he’s been living with the students for the past few weeks.”

Douglas talks while stripping wax off of himself, yelping a little each time. “But I don’t— _yeow_ — get it. Sebastian— _ouch_ — saved Leo’s life. Why would Krane— _youch_ — do that?”

“Because he needed to gain our trust,” Donald realizes. “He needed us to trust him— and all the students— or he wouldn’t have access to us and the kids.”

“What a creep,” Tasha says. “And what did he want Adam’s chip for, anyway?”

“Oh, I made that happen,” Bree says. “I knew if he took out Adam’s chip he might forget to use the remote on Adam, and Adam would be free of the Triton App.” She frowns. “Of course… now my chip _and_ Adam’s chip are broken for good.”

Donald sighs. “Guess we’ll have to replace you with some newer models,” he says. “Leo, why don’t you head up the hill and pick some out for us?”

“Very funny,” Douglas says, rolling his eyes. “Adam, Bree, I can make you some new chips.”

Adam fist-pumps and high-fives Bree. “ _Yes_ ,” Bree says, because for as much as she worried about that chip, as realistically as she considered smashing it, watching a Triton App-controlled Adam destroy it felt like losing a part of herself.

“One for me too?” Leo asks.

“Oops, sorry, can’t hear you Leo, I have wax in my ears,” Douglas lies, not looking at Leo.

Donald hugs Leo and then gets up to hug Bree. “We’ll worry about new chips tomorrow. And about… mopping up the bionic megalomaniac smeared on the floor of the lab. For now, I’m just happy that everyone’s safe and sound. Bree— thank you for your quick thinking. You saved this whole family, _and_ all the students. Chase, Leo, thanks for fighting Krane. You’re both spectacular. And Adam…” He smiles. “Thanks for always being the designated bug killer.”

Mr. Davenport goes around for another round of hugs and then heads upstairs with Tasha, leaving Douglas to put away their makeshift icepacks. “I don’t know about you kids,” Douglas says, “but I could really go for a midnight snack. Broccoli and peas sound good to anybody?”

Bree just smiles, leans into Adam’s side, and promptly falls asleep.

The next day, no one wakes up before eleven.

Leo, the Davenports, and the bionic students all have plenty of bumps and bruises from the previous night, but rest does them well. Bree wakes up in her capsule feeling completely rejuvenated, the searing pain in her abdomen from getting hit by lasers fading to a dull ache.

“Good morning, sleepyheads,” she says as Chase and Adam pad out of their capsules, and then she runs up the hill to help Douglas make breakfast for all the students.

Everyone’s shaken but recovering. Apparently, Taylor got most of the questions out of the way the night before, because now the students seem more concerned with what there is to eat than what happened last night.

Bree grabs a bagel and a cup of coffee and goes out to the balcony, where Taylor’s standing alone, nursing her own coffee and staring out at the horizon. “How you feeling?” Bree asks.

Taylor shrugs. “I was really scared,” she says. “And I guess… kind of ashamed.”

Bree stares at her. “For what?” she says, honestly shocked. “Taylor, you were amazing last night. And helping with the students… I’m proud of you.”

Taylor just shakes her head. “I feel like I should’ve been able to fight off the Triton App,” she says. “You were even helping me, and I couldn’t… I was just helpless.”

Bree reaches out and puts one hand over Taylor’s, awkward but trying to come across as reassuring. “Don’t think about it,” she starts, echoing what Adam told her when she woke up alone and scared in a field. But she changes her mind. “I mean… no, it’s important to think about it. But don’t think about it that way. Krane controlled everyone. It’s not anybody’s fault but his.”

Weirdly, the advice she gives Taylor feels like advice she should be listening to herself. Nine months under the Triton App, under Krane’s control… it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her fault. “You’re right,” Taylor says, and while it looks like a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders, her eyes still have that faraway look.

“You okay?” says Bree.

“Just thinking about Sebastian.” She shrugs. “Or, I guess, not Sebastian. S-3. He didn’t even get a name. It’s like he wasn’t even a person.”

Bree shakes her head. “He was a person,” she says. “Just like us. And what happened to us happened to him. And… he was like us, and he was like Leo. He used his bionics to save his father’s life, just like Leo. But Krane never even gave him a chance.”

Taylor nods and sips her coffee pensively, then splutters and spits it out when it’s too hot. “I’m gonna have to get used to that.”

“You’ll have time to,” Bree promises. “S-3 was a person,” she says again, “because that’s who we’re gonna remember him as.” Even if they only remember him in flashbacks and nightmares as another of Krane’s drone soldiers, sparring with them, living with them, while they all lived hopelessly in the thrall of the Triton App. “And that’s who we are, and that’s who we’re goin’ to be.”

Taylor smiles at her. “You kind of sound like a TED Talker.”

“Shut up, Tay-Tay.”

Taylor finishes up her coffee and goes to play checkers with Spin, and Douglas switches places with her on the balcony. “Hey,” he says to Bree, and he’s still got bits of wax stuck to him in various places. “If I haven’t said it yet, I’m proud of you. For last night, and for… just for being you.”

Bree mumbles a thank you and stares out at the horizon. “I’m sorry about Krane.”

“Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he tells her.

“No, I mean like, I’m sorry… _for_ you. Because of Krane. He was your friend, and he turned on you, and… I know that happened forever ago, but I’m sorry it happened. And… I guess I’m kind of sorry he’s dead.”

Douglas really considers that for a moment, standing in contemplative silence. “He was evil, and he tried to destroy my whole family,” he muses. “And he did try to turn me into a human candle. But for a long time, he was all that I had.” He sighs. “I can’t say I’ll miss him, but… he was a big part of my life. In a good way, and then in a bad way.” He cuffs her on the shoulder and smiles. “But he’s not all I have anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time.”

Everyone’s a little nicer to each other that day than usual. Tasha helps Douglas with the dishes, Adam actually gives Chase a shoulder massage when he complains about a crick in his neck. Leo’s more than helpful with the students. After the chaos of the previous night, everyone’s just trying to slide back into the uneasy state of semi-normalcy they had before.

But Bree has a different idea.

The next day, she and her brothers gather all the students up in the Davenport living room for a talk. And she’s hoping Taylor’s right calling her a TED Talker, because she needs to sound impressive if she’s going to convince everyone that her idea is the right one.

“Hi everyone,” she says, feeling goofy as she gives the students a little wave. Tasha, Mr. Davenport and Douglas all snagged seats on the couch while Leo, Chase and Adam sit on the stairs with Bob and Spin. “So… um, okay… so…” She coughs, feeling way too awkward. “About three years ago, Leo met me, Adam and Chase and brought us to high school. And it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. And, um, I think Adam and Chase would agree with me.” They do, and they offer over-the-top hoots and hollers from the stairs. Bree smiles at them and keeps going. “So… so Mr. Davenport and I enrolled all of you as students at Mission Creek High.”

A few of the students whine about more work, but the majority seem intrigued and excited. “Seriously?” Taylor says, looking from Bree to Mr. Davenport. “How did you pull that off?”

“Well, I talked to the principal,” Donald says, standing up to address everyone. “And she said absolutely not, under any circumstances, no way, yadda yadda yadda. And then I wrote her a check and she started making these really creepy happy dragon noises, so I took that as a yes.”

“Awesome!” Bob says. “We’re going to school!”

“Do we have to?” Spin complains.

“Yes, you have to,” Mr. Davenport says, but his tone is warm. “And I’m going to tell you something that my beautiful wife said to me three years ago— you kids aren’t science experiments. You’re teenagers.”

“And there’s no better place for you to learn how to be teenagers than Mission Creek High School,” Bree says. Everyone starts murmuring in agreement. Over in the corner, Kate and Logan look absolutely thrilled.

“First of all, I love this idea,” Tasha says. “And not only because Donald gave me some of the credit. But, um, what about all of their last names? They can’t just be the Kranes.”

Donald shrugs. “Oh, we’ll make half of them be Davenports and half of them be Dooleys.”

“I wanna be a Perry,” Bob pipes up.

“Oh no, she got to you,” Leo says. 


	2. Epilogue

Not long after that, Douglas goes to pop open a bottle of (non-alcoholic) sparkling cider so they can all celebrate. Donald starts explaining the logistics of their schedules, how they’ll go to school, come home for training, and then get some free time to relax or play games in between dinner and bedtime.

“See, he figured out how to raise teenagers by testing stuff out on us,” Chase points out to his siblings. “We  _are_  literally lab rats.”

“Whatever,” Bree says. “I’m just glad these kids won’t have to go on strike. Or get stranded in Antarctica. Or get locked up in beach jail.”

“Yep,” Adam says. “They’ll all get to experience their own unique assortment of disasters and catastrophes.”

“Hey,” Taylor says, approaching Leo. She looks uncharacteristically shy all of a sudden. “I was wondering if… well, would it be alright if I was one of the Dooleys?”

Leo grins. “Totally,” he says, doing that embarrassing little leg-swing he does when he’s smitten. “If you want, you can use my middle name too. It’s Francis. Gender neutral.”

Bree raises her eyebrows and smirks at Adam and Chase, who both snicker just a little. Honestly, though, it’s nice to see Leo and Taylor hitting it off. It might be the one good thing that came out of all this mess, Bree thinks to herself.

But then, looking across the whole room at the eager, excited faces of forty-odd bionic kids, all psyched to go the school and learn about the world, realizing what she and her brothers mean to these kids, what they mean to her… she changes her mind. A lot more than one good thing came out of the disaster that was her nine months as Krane’s soldier.

The night before the students’ first day at school, Douglas calls Adam and Bree down to the lab, and Leo and Chase tag along with them. “Good news,” he says, patting the chip fabricator beside him. “I was able to replicate your chips. You can get all your abilities back.” He glances at Bree. “If, you know, if you want.”

She nods. “Yeah, I’m ready now.” Leo and Chase watch on expectantly as Bree and Adam climb into their respective capsules, the chips all lined up. Douglas flips all the switches and presses all the buttons, and then Bree feels the slight buzz run through her whole body as the chip slides into her neck.

She and Adam step out of their capsules, both flexing their hands like they’re trying to feel the bionics thrumming through their bodies. Bree’s ready to run again, more than ready to watch the world blur around her as wind streamlines past her face. She puts one foot forward, leans into a sprint— and nothing happens. “Hey, it’s not working.”

“Hi everybody, I’m Chase,” Adam says in an identical replication of his little brother’s voice. “And I love vegetables, math, and returning library books on time.” He’s using Bree’s vocal manipulation— and getting a kick out of it.

“Oops,” Douglas says. “Must’ve mixed up the chips.”

“Hi everybody, I’m Bree,” Adam says in Bree’s voice. “My favorite things to do are put on lip gloss, boss people around and repel boys.”

“Excuse me?” Bree says, activating Adam’s laser vision and hitting the spot on the wall behind him. Adam uses her super speed to jet away, and Bree goes racing after him. “Yeah, you’d better run!”

“Kids, settle down,” Douglas yells, chasing after them with the chip extractor. Adam zooms back to his capsule with a cheeky grin and Bree comes panting after him, trying to get a breath in so she can use Adam’s enhanced lung capacity. “Adam! Bree! I will turn this lab around!”

“Wow,” Chase comments. “You really sounded like our dad for a second.”

“I  _am_  your dad,” he grumbles. “Ish. Sort of. Not really. I like being the fun uncle.” He extracts the chips from Bree and Adam’s necks and sends them back to their capsules, this time with the right chips in the right places. “Okay,” he says, hands hovering over the cyber desk. “Ready?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah,” says Bree, and again she hears the familiar whirr of the machinery in her capsule, the hum of the lab around her, the comforting  _click_  as the chip connects with her bionic infrastructure.

It’s going to be okay. It really is.

Her capsule slides open.


End file.
